What’s on My Social Security Statement?

The second page includes a table laying out your lifetime earnings that were subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes, an accounting of how much you’ve paid in those taxes, and bullet points on benefit calculations and eligibility.

Once you’re receiving benefits, the bar chart showing payment projections disappears, but the statement still includes information on how your payments are calculated and your personalized table showing your lifetime earnings and a breakdown of taxes paid.

What if there’s a mistake in my earnings report?

If you find a mistake in your income history, such as missing years or incorrect amounts, correcting it is crucial — an incorrect or incomplete earnings record can reduce benefits for you and your family.

The first step is to try to find proof of the earnings you believe were omitted or incorrectly entered. That could include a W-2 form, a tax return, or a wage stub or pay slip. If you don’t have any of those, make notes with details the SSA can use to try and track down the correct information, such as your employer’s name, where you worked, the dates you worked there, how much you recall earning, and the name and Social Security number you used.

Next, alert the SSA about your concern. You can do this online via your My Social Security account, by phone at 800-772-1213, or in person at a local Social Security office (call the same number to make an appointment).

There’s a time limit for correcting earnings errors — you typically have three years, three months and 15 days from the end of the taxable year when the earnings were paid to make a fix — but there are exceptions to this rule. For example, you still can make corrections after the deadline if:

• You discover that earnings on your tax return differ from what’s on your Social Security statement.
• Your employer failed to report wages you received to the IRS or reported them incorrectly.
• Wages reported by your employer were never entered into your statement.
• A clerical error, such as transposed numbers, was made on the statement.
• The error is due to fraud or identity theft.

Why does Social Security provide statements?

Social Security statements are designed to help people plan for retirement by providing estimates of their expected benefits, and to ensure that their lifetime earnings data is accurate. They were inaugurated in 1995, when the SSA began mailing statements to people age 60 and over who were not yet receiving benefits, and expanded four years later to reach workers 25 and older.

Before that, to get an estimate of future benefits or check your earnings record, you had to call the SSA or visit a field office and fill out a form. Weeks later, you would receive your information in the mail, and only then could you begin addressing any mistakes you found.

By 2011, the SSA was sending out 155 million statements a year at an annual cost of $70 million for printing and postage, prompting the agency to suspend the mailings to cut costs, according to the Congressional Research Service. The following year, statements were made available online via the My Social Security portal.

In 2014, the SSA resumed some mailing, sending paper statements to people at ages 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55 and 60 who were not receiving benefits or using My Social Security. The current policy, limiting automatic paper mailings to people 60 and older who meet those criteria, was put in place in 2017, but the SSA continues to encourage people to sign up for digital accounts for anytime access to their statements.