I filed my taxes last week and my tax accountant calculated that I had to pay a penalty on social security for earning too much money( over 14,000). I just retired last year and collected no income earnings once I started collecting SS but I did work 3 months before I started collecting, I retired at the end of febuary and was paid vacation through March. My SS checks started if April. Do the same maximum earnings rules apply even when we only collected for a partial year?
All of the rules posted on the SSA site about earnings appear to support your accountant (this assumes that you have not yet reached your full retirement age (probably 66). However, you are (probably) going to get a much more informed answer by calling them directly. Since they will know about your earnings (and will not know exactly when they were earned), they will recover what you owe by simply withholding benefits. You will need to contact them sooner or later. Better sooner.