After you stop working, you may receive payments or other compensation for work you did before you started receiving Social Security benefits or became disabled. We call these "Special Payments" because, unlike regular earnings, they do not:
- cause any deduction in your Social Security retirement benefits. They are excluded from the annual earnings limit.
- affect your eligibility for disability benefits.
We may not know some of your earnings are special payments unless you tell us about them. If you worked for an employer, payments or other compensation received after retirement count as a special payment if the last thing you did to earn the payment was completed before you stopped working.
Some examples of special payments to employees include:
- Bonuses
- Vacation pay or sick leave accumulated in years prior to retirement
- Severance pay
- Back pay
- Standby, idle-time, subject-to-call, or non-work pay
- Sales commissions
- A payment due to retirement or delayed (deferred) compensation reported on a W-2 form for one year that was earned in a previous year.
If you were self-employed, income received after the first year you retire counts as a special payment if you performed "substantial services in self-employment" to earn the payment before you were entitled to receive Social Security benefits. "Substantial services in self-employment" means that you devoted more than 45 hours a month to the business, or between 15 and 45 hours to a business in a highly skilled occupation. Some examples of special payments to self-employed people include:
- Income received by an owner of a business based on substantial services in self-employment performed in the year or years before retirement
- Farm agricultural program payments
- Income from carry-over crops
If you received special payments as described above, select "Yes." Otherwise select "No." If you did receive a special payment, we will contact you for more information after we receive your application.
Use the "Remarks" screen, which will appear later, to tell us about any
For more information about special payments, go to "Special Payments After Retirement."