A. Generally, if the worker is a U.S. citizen, the person can receive Social Security payments outside the United States as long as the recipient is eligible for payments and is in a country where the Social Security Administration can send payments. Some countries prohibit the Social Security Administration from sending benefits.
Specifically, the Social Security Administration cannot send benefit payments to eligible individuals in North Korea or Cuba. If the U.S. citizen is living and working in one of these restricted countries, the Social Security Administration will withhold payments while the person is in the restricted country. Once she moves to a country that is not restricted, the Social Security Administration will make up the withheld payments.
If she is not a U.S. citizen but is otherwise eligible for benefits, she will lose the payments that were withheld while living in the restricted country.
When U.S. citizens are living in certain other countries, the Social Security Administration will only send payments if they meet certain exceptions. Those countries include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
The Social Security Administration considers individuals out of the country if they are working outside the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, or American Samoa for at least 30 days in a row. They will be considered outside of the United States until they return and stay in the United States for at least 30 days in a row.
If the individual is eligible for Social Security benefits and works or owns a business outside the United States, and is younger than full retirement age, the entrepreneur is required to notify the Social Security Administration of the work. If a worker fails to do so, the Social Security Administration can charge a penalty. Workers are required to report even if they only work part-time or are self-employed part-time.
Workers may lose benefits altogether because of work tests. There are two tests the Social Security Administration considers when a worker is working outside the United States. The first test is the foreign work test. It applies when the worker is younger than full retirement age and her work outside the U.S. is not covered by Social Security. With this test the Social Security Administration will withhold benefits for each month the worker works more than 45 hours outside the United States in employment or self-employment not subject to U.S. Social Security taxes. With this test it does not matter how much a person earns or how many hours are worked each day.
Under the foreign work test the Social Security Administration considers a person to be working any day he or she:
- works as an employee or self-employed person;
- has an agreement to work even if the person does not actually work because of sickness or vacation, or
- is the owner or part owner of a trade or business, even if the person does not actually work in the trade or business, or the person does not make any income from it.
If the worker is a U.S. citizen or resident receiving U.S. Social Security benefits and the worker is working in a country that has an international social security agreement with the United States that exempts earnings from U.S. Social Security taxes, that worker’s earnings are subject to the foreign work test. The second test is the annual retirement test.
The second test applies if the earnings are covered by Social Security and the worker is under full retirement age. If the work is covered by Social Security, the same test that applies to workers inside the United States applies to those working outside the United States. Under the annual retirement test a worker can earn up to $17,640 without a reduction in benefit. For every $2 above the limit, the Social Security Administration will reduce the worker’s benefit by $1. In the year the worker reaches full retirement age, the SSA will reduce the worker’s benefit $1 for every $3 the worker earns over the annual limit. When the worker reaches full retirement age, the reduction no longer applies.
For more information about this topic, see the Social Security Administrations brochure.
https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10137.pdf