Supplemental Security Income: What It Is and How You Qualify

Supplemental Safety Earnings (SSI) is a authorities program that gives month-to-month earnings to folks with restricted assets and low incomes and who’re blind, have a qualifying incapacity or are 65 or older. The utmost month-to-month SSI profit is $914 per individual ($1,372 for a pair) in 2023^[0].

The Social Safety Administration (SSA) units the utmost SSI profit every year. The quantity will increase in line with Social Safety’s cost-of-living adjustment components.

Congress created SSI in 1974. The Social Safety Administration administers SSI. In Might 2023, SSI paid advantages to about 7.5 million folks.

• Forty-four states have applications that present extra quantities, known as dietary supplements, to SSI recipients (Arizona, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, Tennessee and West Virginia do not; nor do the Northern Mariana Islands)^[0]. In some states, the SSA administers these extra funds. {Qualifications} and particulars for these applications range by state.

To qualify for SSI, you need to have restricted earnings and restricted assets, and you need to meet residency necessities. You should even be 65 or older, blind or disabled^[0]. Every of those qualification hurdles has particular guidelines.

To qualify for SSI, your month-to-month qualifying earnings can’t exceed $914 (the most important month-to-month SSI profit quantity this yr). The Social Safety Administration might cut back your SSI profit in case you have earnings from different sources.

Listed here are some issues to learn about how the Social Safety Administration appears to be like at earnings:

• Earned earnings — from a job or self-employment, for instance — is taken into account earnings.

• Some earned earnings does not set off a profit discount, although. For instance, the primary $65 of earned earnings doesn’t depend towards the $914 SSI earnings restrict, and solely half of earnings above the primary $65 counts towards the $914 earnings restrict^[0]. For instance, when you earn $500 a month, the Social Safety Administration would possibly cut back your month-to-month SSI profit by $217.50.

• Unearned earnings, comparable to Social Safety retirement funds, pension earnings and dividends from investments, are additionally thought-about earnings. Unearned earnings sometimes reduces the SSI profit greenback for greenback. For instance, $500 in month-to-month pension earnings might cut back your SSI profit by $500.

• Unearned earnings additionally has exemptions. Supplemental Vitamin Help Program (SNAP) advantages, tax refunds, dwelling vitality monetary help, state help, faculty monetary assist, loans, catastrophe assist and tribal funds sometimes don’t depend towards the earnings restrict.

• Issues or providers you get totally free or at a reduction, together with free or below-market hire, are thought-about earnings, even when you bought them from household or pals. This type of assist, known as in-kind assist, can cut back SSI by a most of $324.66 monthly. In-kind assist doesn’t all the time cut back SSI funds greenback for greenback; the quantity depends upon a wide range of components, together with the kind of assist you obtain and its estimated worth.

• If a partner, father or mother or different important individual with whom you reside receives earnings however doesn’t obtain SSI, it could possibly cut back your SSI funds. The discount isn’t greenback for greenback. As a substitute, a fancy components determines the discount quantity.

To qualify for SSI, the worth of any money, shares and private property you personal can’t exceed $2,000 ($3,000 for {couples})^[0].

Like earnings, there are exemptions. Widespread examples embody a home you personal (so long as you’re dwelling in it), one car and family items.

To qualify for SSI, you need to:

• Be a U.S. citizen or nationwide. There are some exceptions, together with for some refugees.

• Reside in a U.S. state, Washington, D.C., or the Northern Mariana Islands.

• Not depart the U.S. for greater than a month or 30 consecutive days.

Chances are you’ll qualify for SSI when you meet the previous monetary and residency standards and you’ve got 20/200 imaginative and prescient or much less in your higher eye or a slim sight view (in technical phrases, the Social Safety Administration defines this because the widest diameter of your visible subject subtending an angle of 20 levels or much less).

Chances are you’ll qualify for SSI when you meet the previous monetary and residency necessities and you’ve got a incapacity. The Social Safety Administration defines a incapacity as a bodily, psychological, emotional or studying impairment that’s prone to final for no less than one yr or could be anticipated to result in dying.

• If you’re youthful than 18, the incapacity should severely restrict your potential to operate.

• If you’re 18 or older, the incapacity should forestall you from discovering “substantial gainful exercise,” which is usually, however not solely, employment or operating a enterprise. When you work and earn greater than $1,470 monthly, the Social Safety Administration doubtless will not contemplate you to have a qualifying incapacity.

The Social Safety Administration doesn’t resolve whether or not you could have a qualifying incapacity; state companies known as Incapacity Willpower Providers (DDS) do. The native DDS opinions your software and decides your medical eligibility. In some circumstances, DDS might contact your medical doctors, academics, therapists and kin to study extra about your situation. The company may pay for a medical check to find out whether or not you could have an eligible incapacity.