Retirement Benefits

Discrepancies in Benefits Paid by the Railroad Retirement Board for SSA Gao ID: HRD-86-3 February 5, 1986

GAO surveyed 17 different types of data exchanges between the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), focusing on the benefit payments that RRB made on behalf of SSA.

GAO found that, although RRB and SSA developed a monitoring system (CSAUDIT) to verify the accuracy of payments RRB made on behalf of SSA to beneficiaries entitled to both railroad retirement and social security benefits, only 12 percent of the 190,000 identified payment discrepancies were reconciled. Most of the discrepancies remain unreconciled because: (1) RRB and SSA disagree about the adequacy of CSAUDIT as a reconciliation tool; and (2) neither agency has committed sufficient resources to reconcile the increasing case backlog. RRB is unwilling to expend resources on what it believes to be unnecessary and costly work, and SSA refers many CSAUDIT discrepancies to RRB that it could resolve. The review of discrepant cases and recent RRB and SSA data suggest that many beneficiaries have erroneously received substantial amounts for years. The delays in reconciling these discrepancies have led to extended periods of erroneous payments and situations where erroneous payments could not be remedied.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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