My partner (an Australian) spent a year in the US a few decades ago, and being employed, paid some amount into US Social Security. He is now claiming an Age Pension from the Australian government, and they’ve informed him that he might be due for ‘some’ recompense from the US as well. He is expected to pursue this financial avenue and to inform the Aus gummint of the outcome as it may affect his rate of payment for the Aus pension.
Now, seeing as it was so long ago, he’s forgotten his US SS number, and indeed forgotten the exact address where he resided and also the exact dates of residence during his time there. How should he go about having his number re-issued without this information?
Also, for non US citizens, how does Social Security work, and would working for just one year entitle him to any support payment? Would it be a legitimate pension, or just repayment of the monies he originally paid in?
IOW, how does SS work for those of us who aren’t American?
Searching the SSA turned up this page that you might want to look into. From what I can tell glancing it over, one year of work in the US may not be enough to qualify for compensation. But IANA employee of SSA. I am just an English teacher.
ETA: It does seem possible that you could add the work credits from his work in the US with that of the Australian pension plan, without the social security number or other relevant information, it could become incredibly difficult to get credit for them. Dealing with SSA is mind-numbing enough for US citizens, I cannot imagine what it is like for foreigners.
As a former SS employee, the first thing I thought of when reading the OP was the Totalization Agreement as explained in seodoa’s link. Your partner would need to provide his SSN in order to have any applicable credits transferred. If he was in the US I’d suggest calling the toll-free SSA assistance number, where they should be able to do a search under his name and date of birth to find it; they’d probably also want additional verification such as place of birth and parent’s names (which he would have give when he applied for the number) to release the number. His US residence address and exact dates of residence would not be needed.
Disclaimer: The most recent stats I saw were from a decade or so ago, I forget the specific numbers, and don’t have time to look them up right now. I suspect similar figures are availiable at ssa.gov.
My understanding is that individuals recover the amount they paid in within a relatively short time - I believe around 5 years. So the only people who don’t get back what they paid in are folks who are unfortunate enough to die within a short time after retiring (or before they retire.)
One uncertainty concerns the investment value of one’s contributions. Folks often seems to think that if they hadn’t been required to pay into SS, not only would they have saved the equivalent of their SS contributions, but they would have invested it brilliantly, beating the market. The figures I recall seeing reflected a modest return on investment. Of course economists would differ as to the reasonableness of any particular assumption.
But the bottomline is, if you collect SS retirement bens for 10 years, you are receiving more than you ever paid in (even adjusted for inflation). I don’t want to push this comparison too far, though, because it is a mistake to view SS as a personal retirement account.
While some unfortunate souls will die before recouping their contributions, remember that there are millions of folks drawing monthly checks far exceeding any contributions they made into SS. Hell, kids and adults draw SSI without having ever paid a cent into SS.
I’m an Australian working in the US. While there may be some agreement between the US and Australia about exchange of SS credits, I’m not aware of it. However, as a general rule, in order to gain a SS pension in the US, you need to have worked for at least part of 10 years, paying the SS tax. (I will be there in just 5 months!)
You get the pension regardless of citizenship, if living in the US, and (for all practical purposes) regardless of where you live if you are a US citizen (there are some problems if you live in a place like North Korea). Non-citizens who retire to outside the US would get a SS pension in a lot of countries (e.g., Canada, Australia, the European Union), but they have more problems than citizens do if they retire to obscure third world countries. They can also get the SS pension reduced if they also have a government pension from some other country: this may affect me, but it’s so complex that I haven’t tried to work out the details,
If you’re interested in learning more about the exchange of SS credits (definitely possible) /windfall elimination provisions (yes, they will probably take some money away if you claim pension in multiple countries)/etc, I really recommend reading the site I posted above. It reads like a bullet ( maybe a list of bullets of stereo instructions, but it’s still a pretty easy read/skim). These international tax treaties are fun stuff.
When I lived in Australia I used to see newspaper ads all the time from the Australian government aimed at pensioners to help them secure their overseas pensions. Wow, a government actually willing to help people!
Being the inquisitive type (and still far from retirement) I dug into the matter. Of course, the Australian government was more than willing to help pensioners obtain their overseas pensions. It wasn’t out of the goodness of their hearts. The Australian government just wanted to tax those overseas pensions and reduce what they would have to pay out themselves.
There’s a similar totalization agreement between Canada and the U.S. My dad worked in Canada for five years, the U.S. the other years of his working life and he gets some kind of pro-rated Canadian Social Security.