Can your credit score affect your US Social Security benefits?

In a strict sense, your credit score has no incidence and cannot affect your benefits from the Social Security program in the United States. Therefore, regardless of whether you have a credit score of 500 or 850, your benefits will not change because of that, but because of the credits you have contributed to this federal program.

However, it should be noted that there are certain debts that they can cause your Social Security benefits to be garnished or reduced at least until your debt is fully settled.

For example, there are circumstances in which your Social Security benefits may be garnished to enforce a legal obligation to meet outstanding child support or alimony payments.. The embargo for this type of circumstance is determined based on local laws.

Similarly, the Treasury Department may withhold part of your Social Security benefits to settle federal tax debts or even non-tax debts to other federal agencies (such as government student loans), under federal law (specifically the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996). The institution will notify the user of this measure if it finds any debt of a non-tax nature.

Despite this, we reiterate: credit score has no direct impact on Social Security benefits.

Can identity verification by Social Security affect my credit score?

On the other hand, It should be noted that identity verification by Social Security is not a process that will not affect your credit score either. Although it does involve a “soft check” of your credit report, according to information published by the Social Security Administration (SSA).

The “soft verification” or “soft check” It is a process that some financial organizations carry out on your credit report to review aspects such as your debts or your credit score.

The “hard verifications”, for their part, are those revisions on your credit report that will make you lose points, and these are carried out by the lenders at the time you request new lines of financing.

These checks will be removed from your credit report 12 months after they were made, and cannot be seen by creditors.

It should be noted that if you have a fraud alert on your credit report, you will not be able to create your digital account on the Social Security website. In case this happens, you will need to ask the Social Security identity service provider to remove the alert.