Dear Larry,
This is about an overpayment of CDB/DAC benefits. My adult disabled child recently got a lump sum payment for part of this year, but according to my calculations it is too much. (One mistake was that not enough SSI payments already received for the same months were subtracted.) My attempts to call SSA were met with long holding times. Instead of spending hours driving to and waiting at the local SSA office, I would like to mail a check with an explanation to the SSA for the amount overpaid BEFORE I get an overpayment letter, but I do not know where to mail it. I would like to get this resolved before the year ends for tax purposes. Do you know where I should mail this? Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

Hi,

I appreciate your honesty, but doing what you suggest would be problematic at best. If the Social Security Administration (SSA) receives a refund of an incorrect payment that hasn't yet been identified on their system, they would have no way of properly crediting the refund to your son's record. Because of that, there is likely little chance that such a refund would help resolve any potential tax issues. More likely, it would just result in a longer delay in getting your refund credited once the overpayment does show up in the system.

A better alternative may be to simply hold onto the overpaid funds until SSA does notify you of the overpayment. Refunds received once an overpayment is posted to SSA's computer system can be quickly credited. In the meantime, you could send a letter to your nearest SSA office explaining your calculations and why you believe that your son was overpaid. You can find your servicing office's address using SSA office locator: https://secure.ssa.gov/ICON/main.jsp.

By the way, the calculations involved in determining the amount that SSI (Supplemental Security Income)should be reimbursed in cases in which the recipient receives a lump sum back payment of Social Security benefits are very complex. When such SSI offset computations must be manually computed, they can usually only be done by an SSI technical expert.

Best, Jerry