How Much Can I Earn While on Social Security Disability in 2022?

The Social Security Disability (SSD or SSDI) maximum monthly income caps for SSD benefits recipients change every year. The Clauson Law Firm specializes in helping people who apply for and receive SSD and SSI benefits, and we want you to be fully informed about all the upcoming SSDI changes for 2022.

2022 Maximum Monthly Income Changes ($1,350, up from $1,310)

The 2022 income limit for those receiving SSDI benefits was $one,310 per calendar month. That is what the Social Security Administration (SSA) set equally the income level above which iS considered a worker "not disabled." The exceptions to that rule are explained below in this weblog article. That level of monthly income was the maximum corporeality of countable income a recipient could receive unless they were bullheaded. Blind applicants are permitted to earn more than due to their special inability; their income cap is $two,190 per month in 2021.

The new year brings an entirely new set of limits considering the income caps and benefit amounts need to be adjusted to go on upward with the rate of aggrandizement seen during the previous yr.

The new 2022 SSD monthly income limit is $ane,350 for benefit recipients with vision and $two,260 for blind SSD recipients.

  • 2021 Maximum Allowable Earned Income Cartoon SSD Benefits = $1,310 per month.
  • The blind SSD benefits recipients' earning limit is $2,190 per month.
  • 2022 Maximum Allowable Earned Income Drawing SSD Benefits = $one,350 per month.
  • The blind SSD benefits recipients' earning limit will exist $two,260 per month.

What If Y'all Brand More Than the 2022 Maximum Income Limit?

The SSA imposes limits on the amount benefit recipients tin earn each calendar month considering they utilize the physically or mentally dumb person'south ability to earn income as the defining cistron to determine if their harm qualifies as a "disability" for purposes of collecting SSD benefits.

The SSD program exists to provide financial support to people who paid FICA taxes into the Social Security Inability fund through many years of payroll deductions and self-employment taxes. The SSD benefit is intended to be a substitute for your lost wages or salary during your menstruation of disability. Only SSD benefits are reserved for disabled erstwhile workers whose injury or illness prevents them from earning an income to support themselves and their families.

The most experienced SSDI/SSD lawyers are experts in all the 2022 changes to SSD benefit levels, monthly benefit payments, and other details you need to know every bit an SSD applicant or recipient. Every SSD and SSI lawyer at Clauson Law devotes their professional life to helping disabled North Carolinians get the full benefit they deserve.

The SSA rules and regulations fix the level of income the authorities believes is enough to be "Substantial Gainful Activeness" (SGA). This Substantial Gainful Action threshold is the SSD program'due south monthly income cap. Only those who are not able to perform Substantial Gainful Activities are eligible to receive SSD benefits, even if their physical or mental impairments are genuine.

In a brief statement, a person qualifies to receive SSD benefits only if:

  • they paid enough into the arrangement to earn the minimum work credits required,
  • they have a medically determinable physical or mental impairment,
  • their impaired status renders them unable to earn more than $1,350 per month (if sighted),
  • and they have been or are expected to exist unable to earn more than $1,350 per month for at least 12 months, or their harm is expected to result in their death.

If you earn more than than the monthly income cap, then y'all are non recognized as disabled past SSA, and you lot are not eligible to receive Social Security Disability benefits.

What If You Exceed the SSD Monthly Income Limit Temporarily?

Receiving Social Security Inability benefits may suggest that someone is too disabled to practice any work. That's simply not truthful. The measure to proceed to be eligible for SSD benefits is whether a person can earn more than than the monthly SSD income cap. Many worthy, qualified, eligible disabled SSD beneficiaries piece of work or earn income office-time, but their income remains beneath the monthly maximum limit.

But what exercise you do if your role-time job is in a retail store where you lot earn more during the holiday shopping flavor?

Practice you lose your SSD benefits if you exceed the monthly income cap for two or three consecutive months? During the month or more in which yous earn more income than the SSD regulations allow to remain eligible for SSD benefits, yous practise normally lose the payment for those months. If a retail worker earned more the income limit in November, December, and January, merely so either got laid off or had their hours reduced to a level bringing their income under the SSD income cap, then they would immediately regain SSD do good eligibility.

Income Reporting Obligations

The Social Security Disability benefits program requires that every person receiving SSD benefits report their income every month. Some people are tempted to misstate or hibernate a fleck of income to go along their reported income under the SSD income limit. That'southward not a skillful idea for ii reasons.

First, knowingly providing false or inaccurate information to a government agency to get financial back up for which the person isn't eligible tin become a criminal offense. The SSA does not investigate or prosecute every person who mistakenly omits a source of income once or twice for small-scale sums. But anyone who persistently deceives the SSA to obtain benefits they don't qualify for could detect themselves facing federal indictments for Social Security wire fraud or mail fraud or other serious felonies.

2d, if the SSA detects or discovers that you received SSD benefits during a month that you were ineligible because you misstated your income, your benefit payment volition be suspended for one calendar month and you volition need to repay the benefits you were overpaid. A second offense will bring a ii-month suspension, and a third or subsequent incident will issue in a iii-calendar month do good interruption.

If an SSD do good recipient fails or refuses to provide income data without good cause, and then benefits will exist suspended until the income is reported. If after 12 months of break the income date is not submitted, then the SSA may terminate the SSD benefits.

The Good News About Reporting Income

The upside of reporting your monthly income is that timely reporting volition immediately entitle you to resume your SSD benefits if you temporarily exceeded the income limit. There is no need to reapply and no need to await approval to resume benefits. Your damage remains active if but your income topped the limit temporarily.

How to Make More Than the Income Cap and Nevertheless Get SSD Benefits?

The TRIAL WORK Menstruum Program (TWP)

One time the Social Security Administration realized that suspending the SSD benefits of a recipient who succeeded in earning more than the income cap in one calendar month discouraged SSD beneficiaries from trying to work, the SSA needed to solve this dilemma. The SSA wanted to encourage SSD recipients to try a return to work, if they thought they were up to it. How else would a disabled person know what they were capable of achieving every bit time passed and their impaired status improved?

The Trial Work Menstruum (TWP) program enables SSD recipients to "effort" to resume working without fear of losing their monthly SSD benefit. Nether the TWP plan, a disabled SSD recipient who thinks they may be able to return to piece of work is free to try and continue to get their monthly SSD payments.

There are rules and limits to the TWP plan, but the arrangement allows you to earn an "unlimited amount of monthly income" for a total of 9 months. The nine months do not accept to be consecutive. They can be spread out over a five-yr menses.

Which Months Count as Trial Work Menstruum (TWP) Months?

The Trial Work Menstruum program tin can run for whatsoever nine months in a five-year period. And so, which months count as TWP months? While you tin can earn an unlimited amount of income in each of the ix months of your TWP, whatever calendar month in which you earn more than $907 is counted as one TWP month. In 2022, the TWP monthly trigger amount volition be $970.

What Happens When Your Nine-Month Trial Work Period (TWP) Ends?

If you participate in the Trial Work Period Programme (TWP), at some bespeak you volition use up your 9 months of unlimited income while notwithstanding receiving your total SSDI benefits. What then?

The Extended Period of Eligibility — When you frazzle your nine TWP months, the SSA wants to give yous the incentive to continue working if you tin can. The Extended Period of Eligibility (EPE) is a 36-month period in which you have an income "safety net."

Each calendar month, the SSA checks your reported income to meet if you lot exceeded the monthly income cap that is "substantial gainful activity" (SGA). If you do exceed the SGA level, yous will continue to receive your full SSD benefit during a 3-month grace period. After that, your SSD benefit payment will be suspended for any calendar month your income is above the SGA.

But, if during the 36-calendar month safety internet period your earnings again autumn below the SGA level, your SSD do good payments volition resume for each such month.