SSA’s DI program provides cash benefits to individuals with disabilities, and paid $144 billion to 10.8 million beneficiaries and their families in fiscal year 2015. Individuals are generally considered to have a disability if (1) they cannot perform work that they did before and cannot adjust to other work because of their medical condition(s); and (2) their disability has lasted or is expected to last at least 1 year, or is expected to result in death. Further, individuals must have worked and paid into the program for a minimum period of time to qualify for DI benefits. DI overpayments occur when beneficiaries are paid more than they should be for a given period of time. We previously found that more than half of all DI overpayments are paid to beneficiaries earning above program limits. Overpayments may also result if SSA does not cease benefit payments when notified by a beneficiary of a change in work status, when inaccurate information and administrative errors lead to incorrectly calculated benefits, or as the result of individuals knowingly misleading the agency or committing fraud. As of September 30, 2015, approximately 637,000 individuals owed about $6.3 billion to SSA in DI overpayment debt. SSA will seek repayment of most overpaid benefits after pursuing various procedural steps. Specifically, when SSA detects an overpayment, it requests a full immediate refund, unless the overpayment can be withheld from the beneficiary’s next monthly benefit. SSA also notifies the overpaid person that they may request reconsideration, a waiver, or both. A beneficiary requests reconsideration when he or she disputes that an overpayment occurred or the amount of the overpayment, and requests a waiver when asserting that he or she is neither responsible for the overpayment nor capable of repaying it. SSA may grant a waiver request if it finds that the beneficiary was not at fault for the overpayment and that recovering the overpayment would defeat the purpose of the program or be against good conscience and equity. A waiver permanently terminates collection of a debt. If SSA denies a reconsideration, a waiver, or both, the agency will request full repayment. SSA will attempt to withhold SSA benefits from the beneficiary to immediately recoup the full amount. If the individual is not receiving SSA benefits at the time or is unable to immediately pay the full amount owed, the agency generally requests a repayment plan. This may take the form of voluntary remittances or withholding from monthly SSA benefits. These withholdings may be taken from DI or other SSA benefits being received, such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. Withholding from other SSA benefits is known as cross-program recovery. SSA policy is to obtain repayment within 36 months, but it may approve longer repayment periods after reviewing an individual’s income, expenses, and assets. SSA regulations require a minimum monthly DI withholding of $10, an amount that has not changed since 1960 according to SSA. SSA’s policy is to stop its collection activities and temporarily write off a debt if it meets at least one of these criteria: the debtor cannot or will not repay the debt, the debtor cannot be located after a diligent search, the cost of collection actions is likely to exceed the amount recovered, or the debt is at least two years delinquent. (SSA may refer to such debt write-offs as terminating or conditionally writing off debts.) Temporarily writing off debts conditionally removes them from SSA’s accounts receivable balance, although SSA will refer debts to Treasury for collection through external tools. Prior to referring debts to Treasury, SSA notifies debtors and informs them of the appeal rights. SSA will re- establish these debts and its own collection efforts if it receives payment through these external collection tools or if the individual becomes re- entitled to Social Security benefits. External debt collection tools include tax refund offset, which withholds or reduces federal tax refunds to the individual; federal salary offset, which withholds or reduces wages and payments to federal employees; administrative offset, which withholds or reduces other federal payments (other than tax refunds or salary) to the individual; administrative wage garnishment, which garnishes wages and payments from private employers or state and local governments; and credit bureau referral, which reports delinquent debt to credit bureaus and may adversely affect an individual’s credit scores. Conditionally written-off debts remain subject to collections through any available tools until the debt is paid in full or the case is otherwise resolved. As of the end of fiscal year 2015, SSA had $1.5 billion dollars of overpayments that were conditionally written off. The average amount of written-off debt was about $4,100 and more than 75 percent of these debts were written off over 5 years ago. About 30 percent of people in written-off status were under age 18 when a parent received benefits for them and most of these recipients were written off in their late teens or twenties. The amount of outstanding DI overpayments increased by 70 percent between fiscal years 2006 and 2015, with the amount of debt newly detected and reestablished exceeding the amount collected, waived, or conditionally written off in 9 of the last 10 years. Moreover, while collections of prior debt have seen some increases over the past 10 years, they have not kept pace with new debt established (see fig. 1). SSA can take several actions against individuals who knowingly mislead SSA or make false statements to obtain benefits, and these actions serve as deterrents against potential fraud and abuse. Allegations of suspected wrongdoing are referred to SSA’s OIG by SSA staff or the public. OIG will assess each allegation received to determine whether they warrant investigation. According to SSA, those opened for investigation must be referred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the U.S. Attorney of jurisdiction any time OIG has grounds to believe there has been a criminal violation, as required by the Inspector General Act. Once DOJ reviews a case for potential civil or criminal action, OIG decides to impose civil monetary penalties (penalties) where warranted. Section 1129 of the Social Security Act provides for penalties against individuals who make certain false statements, representations, or omissions in the context of determinations of initial or continuing eligibility. Under that section, there are certain factors that must be considered when determining the amount of a penalty, which are: the nature of the individual’s actions, the circumstances under which the actions occurred, the individual’s history of prior offenses, the individual’s degree of culpability in the current case, the financial condition of the individual, and any other factors that justice may require. OIG officials told us that they exercise discretion when deciding which cases to pursue for penalties and take into account the age of the individual and the availability of OIG resources, among other considerations. A penalty of up to $5,000 may be imposed for each false statement or material omission, and an additional assessment up to double any payment that was made as a result, may be imposed. OIG’s Office of Counsel to the Inspector General (OCIG) imposes penalties, but subsequently refers penalties imposed to SSA’s Office of Operations for collection. According to SSA, because penalties result from fraud and misconduct, SSA cannot terminate collection or write off the debt without the permission of DOJ. Additionally, individuals cannot discharge penalties through bankruptcy. If OCIG declines to impose a penalty, it will consider whether administrative sanctions (sanctions) might be appropriate. If it determines that sanctions may be suitable, OCIG will return the case to SSA for further consideration. SSA is ultimately responsible for deciding whether sanctions are imposed in each case. If it imposes sanctions, the sanctioned individual will not receive benefit payments that he or she would have been entitled to for the duration of the sanction period: 6 months for a first occurrence, 12 months for a second occurrence, and 24 months for any subsequent occurrences. In fiscal year 2015, SSA identified about $1.2 billion in new DI overpayment debt and recovered about $857 million, of which 78 percent was collected by withholding some or all of beneficiaries’ monthly benefits (see fig. 2). SSA officials told us benefit withholding is their most effective tool for recovering overpayments and that collecting overpayments from individuals who no longer receive benefits can be difficult as these individuals may lack tax refunds or other federal and state payments to offset. Nonetheless, while withholding accounts for the bulk of collections, individuals repaying in this way make up less than half of people who have DI overpayment debt. Specifically, those repaying through benefit withholding represent about 311,000 of 637,000 people with DI overpayment debt. Benefit withholding plans, in which SSA withholds a specified amount of an individual’s benefits each month, often reflect lengthy repayment periods. We estimated the length of time needed to complete repayment for overpayments being collected in this way at the end fiscal year 2015 (see fig. 3) and found that over 50 percent of plans will take more than 3 years to complete. In addition, about 44,000, or 1 in 7 withholding plans are scheduled to be completed after the beneficiary’s 80th birthday. Given the age at which these beneficiaries are scheduled to complete repaying their debts, it is possible that many individuals will die before completing repayment. Moreover, individuals with the longest repayment periods account for a disproportionately large share of outstanding overpayment debt. For example, about 10 percent of individuals with withholding plans are scheduled to take over 30 years to repay their debts, but account for nearly a quarter of the outstanding debt to be recouped through withholding. We also found that over a third of withholding amounts were less than $50 and over half were less than $100 (see fig. 4). The median amount of monthly benefits being withheld from beneficiaries’ DI benefits to repay prior overpayments was $57.