Impact of earnings on Social Security benefit

May 26, 2020 10:50 AM

Say someone's income for the last two years was reported as $5,000 and should have been reported as $70,000. Where could they go to find out how much greater their future Social Security benefit would be if their tax returns were amended? Their accountant doesn't know and Social Security has outrageous hold times for the help line. It's a hard one to google because most hits are about the impact of working when you're already drawing SS. Is there a calculator online? Please focus only the question of calculating the difference in future benefit if their earnings record were corrected, and ignore all other legal questions. Thank you!
posted by HotToddy to Work & Money (3 answers total)

They can use the Social Security's own on-line benefits calculators. You input your annual earnings for each year and it calculates the benefit. They can do it twice, once with the reported earning and once with the corrected earning and see what the difference is.
posted by metahawk at 10:59 AM on May 26, 2020 [2 favorites]

Metahawk's got it. Among those options, I think the easiest one to use to make this direct comparison is the one labeled "online calculator" since that's the one that lets you change assumptions in a year-by-year way.
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 11:15 AM on May 26, 2020

Response by poster: Perfect. Thank you!
posted by HotToddy at 11:16 AM on May 26, 2020