Hacker News Reader

Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not sure what the rules are, but perhaps you could set up a corporation that takes on the freelancing jobs and then pays you a salary of $1,200 a month?

No, that'll lose you the benefits.

https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/404/404-1575.htm

"We will evaluate your work activity based on the value of your services to the business regardless of whether you receive an immediate income for your services."

SSI is deliberately set up to fuck people over. (Not in this particular loophole-closer, but in general. You get $900/month to cover food, housing, etc.; a pittance. A savings account balance (or any other countable assets) over $2,000 will lose your benefits.)

View on HN

Hard thresholds on benefits just suck. They should always, always be progressively tapered, in a way that incentivises work. Otherwise you're just creating a permanent class of people without any incentive to contribute to the society that keeps them alive.

I know someone with similar problems in the UK: they are part-time, but working more hours would mean paying more in childcare and lose benefits, ending up with less money than before. It's just stupid.

Retired rich people. Whenever a system it setup to help poor people, a harsh system of cutoffs is needed to prevent retired people from qualifying for the benefit by moving money around on paper. The problem is that we have far too many systems to allow relatively well-off people to "zero" their on-paper income, even their personal assets, during retirement. Entire industries exist to facilitate such trickery (see every other TV commercial on CNN/MSNBC/FOX).

Starving the poor to prevent feeding the rich seems like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Or rather like cutting off someone else's nose to spite people it won't matter much to.

The efforts US politicians go through to make sure that some of the people who have paid a disproportionately large amount of taxes don't get a fraction of them back when they don't need it have been valiant. Considering that you could simply tax them enough to create a universal benefit, effectively refunding part of their own taxes and redistributing the rest, I'd suggest that starving the poor is a goal rather than a side-effect.

We can't give people free college, what if people who could afford college go?

This is America. Don't catch you slippin up.

On the one hand yes. But letting your system be abused by those that have no need for it is never a good use of funds.

That's actually not always true; it depends on the rate of fraud, the amount earned, how widespread it is, and the amount of damage you do to good-faith applicants by making the process harder.

For example, Florida required drug testing to receive welfare; that program cost more than it saved taxpayers in benefits. https://www.tampabay.com/news/courts/florida-didnt-save-mone...

>But letting your system be abused by those that have no need for it is never a good use of funds.

And yet, we have rich people using fraud to get government funds that they have absolutely no need for while the poor get exploited and starve.

The abuse is going on A N Y W A Y; it's just that people get more indignant when one of the "poors" occasionally get that extra soda out of the machine.

If we know what they are so much so that they advertise these services on cable news channels, you'd think the government would be able to make carve outs for these things as they come up no?

I once found German guy on github and wanted to hire him to perform some domain specific programming. He refused with the same argument: will loose the benefits.

>SSI is deliberately set up to fuck people over.

It's a chicken and egg problem because it's guaranteed income. There has to be something where they can do partial work and still be on disability. This example of rising rent means for his area that amount is not enough or he will simply have to move which sucks

Could a group of SSI freelancers set up a co-op to handle that month-to-month averaging?

I'm not sure on this one; I suspect one of the risks would be the SSA deeming the co-op itself to have a valuation and thus a participant's ownership in it count as an asset with enough value to break the $2k limit.

If you mean averaging the money over time, that doesn't seem like it would work since it doesn't affect "the value of your services". I assume it's an abstract value, along the lines of

However, another thing a co-op could do is allocate work among members who do the same kind of work while respecting limits on how much work each member is capable of doing. I assume the rule's purpose is roughly, "Your benefit is predicated on you being incapable of working enough to support yourself, so if you prove otherwise, we can't give you the benefit." Limiting how much each person works seems compatible with that.

But I'd guess the work would need to be allocated based on members' actual capability, not the monthly dollar limit. If someone's work adds up to just barely under the dollar limit consistently month after month, it strongly suggests they're capable of more. Even more so if lots of co-op members have that pattern.

Such a co-op could serve a legitimate purpose because people who can only do limited part-time work may not have much opportunity. Many employers want someone who is full time. Also, some disabilities may make it where someone can only work sporadically. So the co-op could enable someone who is capable of (say) 10 hours/week to do that instead of 0 hours/week.

Brilliant idea. Not only could they distribute the work, but they could also lobby for any needed legal changes.

That (among other thigns) is what business do though. I haven't directly contributed to the bottom line for $WORK for over a month, but as soon as I finish my current project it'll have a significant positive impact. They paid me a steady salary regardless. So long as OP keeps their average contribution under $1,200/mo won't they be fine?

> So long as OP keeps their average contribution under $1,200/mo won't they be fine?

No. If their business brings in $5k/month, that's what the SSA will consider their income. Doesn't matter if it's just accumulating in the business's bank accounts; it's OP's income. They've seen people try this trick; it's why the provision exists.

But if their business brings in $5k for one contract done one month and then has no work for 4 months to bring the average under $1,200, is that not above board with such a ruling? Test 3 in that legal document references that their income will be evaluated relative to what salary they might receive for such work, and I wouldn't think it would be reasonable for the business to be expected to pay more than the average value of their output.

It doesn't average.

https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/cfr20/416/416-0420.htm

> We generally use the amount of your countable income in the second month prior to the current month to determine how much your benefit amount will be for the current month.

Earning $5k in a particular month would mean zero benefit in a subsequent month, and keeping that $5k sitting in their account to tide themselves over would put them over the $2k limit on assets, making them ineligible for SSI.

Well that's a moldy bollocks sandwich of a law isn't it :/ Thanks for the clarification.

I wonder if a 3rd party intermediary entity could be setup to collect the funds from the customer and pay out just the right amount spread over time.

This is correct.

If the 5k is better than the "normal" month with benefit, it is still better to earn the 5k that month, assuming the benefit is immediately restored on the subsequent months with low income.

> It takes up to a month to approve your request for reinstatement. However, this does not mean that your benefits have been completely restored. While you are receiving temporary benefits, the Social Security office is determining your eligibility to completely reinstate your benefits after the six months of temporary benefits. The Social Security office analyzes your medical condition and updates your medical information. If they decide that you are eligible to continue receiving SSI benefits, your temporary benefits become regular SSI benefits. If you are not eligible to receive benefits, your temporary benefits end.

> The Social Security office may approve your request for reinstatement. If your request is approved, your temporary benefits start the month following the month in which you made your request. Temporary benefits can last up to six months.

So: it’s not instant. It’s not immediate. And it risks losing the benefits altogether if they mistake a one-time contract for something he could sustain indefinitely.

Yeah, sorry I didn't read that more carefully. Kind of hard to look at something so broken and not be completely discouraged. Sounds like yet another good argument for basic income policies.

Totally agree, it seems like a messed up system that would be solved by something like that.

Tax law is written by the rich for the rich. Benefits laws is written by the rich for the poor.

Sometimes benefits law is also written by the rich for the rich. Vanishingly few non-rich can come anywhere near maxing out tax-advantaged retirement accounts, even if they have the spare cash to do it (too much of the limit has to come from your employer), meanwhile the rich can easily structure their income to max it out (and max out their spouse's, and their kids', et c.). The most-effective use of health savings accounts is also as a stealth tax-advantaged retirement account for the rich (the trick is you put money in, pay any actual medical expenses with ordinary taxed money outside the account, then at retirement the HSA money that would have gone to those bills, but didn't, and has been invested and growing all this time, can come out tax-free as long as you—or your accountant—kept the receipts)

Ah. Well nevermind that idea, then.

I suppose the OP will just have to stick to smaller jobs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com