Attorney Assessment Fee

Under the Social Security Act, whenever a fee for services is required to be paid to an attorney who has represented a claimant, we must impose on the attorney an assessment to cover administrative costs. Such an assessment shall be no more than 6.3 percent of the attorney's fee or, if lower, a dollar amount that is subject to increase by the automatic cost-of-living increase.

We derive the dollar limit for December 2011 by increasing the unrounded limit for December 2010, $83.85, by 3.6 percent. This gives a new unrounded limit of $86.87, which we then round to the next lower multiple of $1. The dollar limit effective for December 2011 is thus $86.00.