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Retirement Earnings Records and Special Payments for Earlier Work

This guide presents selected U.S. government consumer education from Social Security Administration. References to “we” or “us” in the source material refer to the issuing agency. Source dates and links appear below.

Page references and publication numbers refer to the linked government publication. Figures identified by year apply to that edition, and illustrative examples are not estimates of your own benefit or costs.

How To Correct Your Social Security Earnings Record

If you’re age 18 or older, you can get your Social Security Statement online using your personal my Social Security account. If you don’t have a personal my Social Security account, you can easily create one at www.ssa.gov/myaccount. Your online Statement gives you estimates for retirement, disability, and survivor benefits that you and your family may be eligible for. It also shows your most recent earnings history. Every year your employer tells us how much money you earned so we can update your Social Security record. If you’re self-employed, you report your earnings directly to the IRS .

You should use your personal my Social Security account to review your complete earnings record and make sure it is accurate. There’s a limit to the amount of earnings you pay Social Security taxes on each year. Earnings above the limit do not appear on your earnings record.

Why is it important for my earnings record to be correct?

The Social Security benefits you and your family may receive depend on the amount of earnings shown on your record. If all your earnings are not listed, this could result in lower benefit amounts for you and your family.

Why would earnings be missing?

If the earnings missing from your Social Security record are for the current year or last year, you don’t need to worry. We may not have recorded your most recent earnings yet. They should appear on a later Statement. You may want to check your Statement in August to make sure last year’s amount is correct .

Earnings for earlier years could be missing from your record for a few reasons:

  • Your employer reported your earnings using the wrong name or Social Security number (SSN).
  • You got married (or divorced) and changed your name but never reported the change to us.
  • Your employer reported your earnings incorrectly.
  • You worked using an SSN that didn’t belong to you.

What should I do if earnings are missing?

If you discover earnings are missing from your record, the first thing you should do is find proof of those earnings. This proof could be:

  • A W-2 form (Wage and Tax Statement).
  • A tax return.
  • A wage stub or pay slip.
  • Other wage records.
  • Other documents showing you worked.

If you can’t find any documents showing the earnings missing from your record, try to remember and write down the following information:

  • Your employer’s name.
  • Where you worked.
  • The dates you worked.
  • How much you earned.
  • The name and Social Security number you used when you worked.

How can we help?

After you’ve gathered your documents or made a list of all the information you can remember, contact us. We’ll work with you to correct your earnings record. This process could take some time, depending on the information you provide about your missing earnings. We may have to contact your employers or have you contact them.

Special Payments After Retirement

Bonuses, Vacation Pay, Insurance Commissions, Carryover

What are “special payments”?

After you retire, you may receive payments for work you did before you started to receive Social Security benefits. Usually, those payments will not affect your Social Security benefit if they are for work done before you retired. This fact sheet describes some of the common types of special payments, helps you to decide if you received any, and tells you what steps to take if you did.

What qualifies as a special payment?

If you worked for wages, income received after retirement counts as a special payment. This applies if the last task you did to earn the payment was completed before you stopped work. Some special payments to employees include bonuses, accumulated vacation or sick pay, severance pay, back pay, standby pay, sales commissions, and retirement payments. Another example of a special payment is deferred compensation reported on a W-2 form for one year but earned in a previous year. These amounts may be on your W-2 in the box labeled “Nonqualified Plan.”

If you were self-employed, any net income you receive after the first year you retire counts as a special payment. This applies if you performed the services before your entitlement to Social Security benefits. “Services” are any regular work or other significant activity you do for your business.

Some special payments to self-employed people include:

  • Farm agricultural program payments
  • Income from carryover crops
  • Income gained by an owner of a business who does not perform significant services in that business

Commissions, Sick Pay, Crops, and Other Special Payments

How do earnings limits affect benefits?

If a person who gets Social Security retirement benefits is younger than their full retirement age, there are limits to how much they can earn from work before it affects their benefits. Your full retirement age varies based on the year you were born. You can visit www.ssa.gov/benefits/ retirement/planner/ageincrease.html to find your full retirement age. We reduce benefits, if earnings exceed certain limits.

  • If you are younger than your full retirement age, we deduct $1 in benefits for each $2 you earn above the earnings limit. In 2026, the limit is $24,480.
  • In the year you reach your full retirement age, we reduce your benefits $1 for every $3 you earn above the earnings limit. In 2026, the limit is $65,160.
  • Starting with the month you reach full retirement age you can receive full benefits no matter how much money you earn.

If you think you received a special payment

If you get Social Security and your total yearly earnings exceed the limit, and these earnings include a special payment, contact us. Tell us if you think you received a special payment. If we agree, we will not count that special payment as part of your total earnings for the year.

Example of a special payment

This example shows how we apply a special payment under our rules:

Mr. DeSilva retired at age 62 in November 2025 and began to receive Social Security benefits. In January 2026, Mr. DeSilva receives a check from his employer for $20,000 for his leftover vacation time. Because this is vacation pay he earned before he retired, we’ll consider it a special payment and won’t count it toward the earnings limit for 2026.

Insurance salespeople and farmers

There are two specific occupational groups that commonly receive earnings which qualify as special payments. They are insurance salespeople who receive renewal or repeat commissions and farmers who receive income from carryover crops.

Insurance salespeople

Many insurance salespeople continue to receive commissions after the year they retire for policies they sold before retirement. This income will not affect their Social Security benefits, as long as the income was the result of work done before they retired.

Farmers

Many farmers harvest and store crops one year for sale in another year. Farmers may fully harvest and store crops before or in the month they become entitled to benefits, and then sell them in the next year. Those earnings will not affect benefits for the year they receive the money.

Sources and publication details

The federal agency source text is U.S. government work in the public domain. Fynoptic selected, adapted, and formatted it for this guide. No agency endorsement is implied. Follow the linked sources for current program details and the rules applicable to your circumstances.

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