Yahoo Finance

The Trump administration announced two high-profile changes to Social Security. It says are meant to combat waste and fraud. Here with more details, we've got Yahoo Finance's own Jordan Weissmann. Jordan, what do we know about this?

Uh yeah, so this caused a bit of controversy in the past couple weeks. I want to start off with what I think is the big one for most Yahoo readers and viewers, which is that if you receive a Social Security over payment now, Trump administration says it will try to claw back that money by taking as much as 100% of your entire monthly benefit check. It will take your whole check, or garnish the check. Um this is undoing a reform that the Biden administration put in place that said they would take at most 10% of your monthly benefit if you got overpaid. Um this is going to be a big deal for people on Social Security disability, who um because of the weird work rules in that program often receive over payments. But it also could affect some seniors. And of course, it's controversial because uh the reason they made the Biden administration put that reform in place to start with is that they discovered that some Social Security beneficiaries were getting hit with tens of thousands of dollars worth of overpayment penalties, oftentimes through no fault really of their own, but because of processing delays and things. So you know, be careful on this one and be aware that if you get an over payment, try to do something about it early.

Jordan, how soon might this go into effect?

Uh that this uh starts going into effect after March. So it's going forward. It does not apply to people who had over payments before. Um you know, also the second change I want to talk a little bit about um maybe not as big a deal in the scheme of things, but it got a lot of attention, which is that the Social Security administration is no longer going to allow people to uh change their direct deposit information over the phone. They're going to make you do it in person or through their online portal. This they say is to prevent direct deposit fraud, um people calling up and claiming to be a relative and changing someone's account. Um how often that really happens is a little bit unclear. The reason this got so much attention at first though was there was reporting that the Trump administration was considering much, much stricter limits on what you could do via the phone with Social Security. They either abandoned either that reporting wasn't right or they abandoned those plans. Um but still, they are going to limit uh your ability to change your account. Again, this matters for seniors because sometimes uh they're not so good with computers or they might not be able to get to a Social Security office. Um and now and then their account information might change for reasons out of their control, like their bank merges. So it might be a little bit more of a hassle for some folks. Um be aware, you know, if something changes with your uh direct deposit information, get on it ahead of time before your check is about to land.

All right, great tracking these stories, Jordan. Appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.