I recently started taking social security benefits after waiting 23 months past my FRA. From reading you, I concluded that 23 months of delay past FRA would come to an additional 15.33% in benefit amount (23 x 0.67%). However in January I received on the first 13 months of benefit delay (8.67%). When I call Social Security the national number tells me the state where I filed are the people I need to talk to. The state level people tell me that I have to wait until 2020 taxes are filed before I will get the additional DRC credit. I think I'm getting the runaround! Any thoughts? My thanks in advance!!

Hi,

If you file for benefits between full retirement age (FRA) and age 70 and if you claim your benefits effective with any month other than January, you are initially only credited for the delayed retirement credits (DRC) you earned through December of the year prior to the year in which you claim your benefits. Any additional DRCs earned in the year in which you claim benefits aren't credited until effective with your benefit for January of the following year.

For example, say Bob files for benefits effective with April 2021 when he reaches age 68. Bob would initially only be credited for the 21 DRCs he earned through December 2020. Bob's additional 3 DRCs earned for January through March of 2021 couldn't be credited until his benefit payment for January 2022.

Furthermore, the recomputations to include partial year DRCs are only done periodically on an automated basis, so Bob's benefit rate in the example above might not actually be increased to reflect the additional 3 months of DRCs until sometime in 2023. Bob would, however, be paid any back pay due for months starting with January 2022.

I can't tell from your description whether or not you claimed benefits effective with January 2021 or some month in 2020, so I don't know if your rate has been calculated correctly. If you did claim benefits effective with a month in 2020, then your rate was probably calculated correctly since your initial rate would then only include the DRCs you earned though December 2019. And, if that's the case, you likely won't actually receive your additional DRCs for 2020 until Social Security runs it's automated DRC recomputations process. My understanding is that those recomputations are only done once every 2 years, so you may be waiting a significant amount of time for your rate increase.

Best, Jerry