Finance
Social Security Administration announces new measures to deal with overpayments
The Social Security Administration is capping clawbacks to 10% of benefits checks instead of 100%. (iStock)
The Social Security Administration (SSA) is capping clawbacks of benefit overpayments at 10% of benefits checks instead of 100% after being criticized for draconian repayment plans that left some beneficiaries destitute.
Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley said in a statement that the agency would cease “the heavy-handed practice of intercepting 100% of an overpaid beneficiary’s monthly Social Security benefit” if they failed to respond to a demand for repayment. Additionally, the Social Security Administration will extend repayment plans to 60 months, up from its limit of 36 months, giving recipients an additional two years to repay the money.
The changes come after reports at the end of 2023 indicated that some Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients had seen their benefits suspended or were assessed overpayments due to COVID-19 stimulus checks, worth up to $3,200 per individual or $6,400 per married couple. However, these payments, made between April 2020 and July 2021, were supposed to be independent of Social Security benefits.
“For 88 years, the hard-working employees of the Social Security Administration have strived to pay the right amount, to the right person, at the right time,” O’Malley said. “And the agency has done this with a high degree of accuracy over a massive scale of beneficiaries. But despite our best efforts, we sometimes get it wrong and pay beneficiaries more than they are due, creating an overpayment.
“When that happens, Congress requires that we make every effort to recover those overpaid benefits,” O’Malley continued. “But doing so without regard to the larger purpose of the program can result in grave injustices to individuals, as we see from the stories of people losing their homes or being put in dire financial straits when they suddenly see their benefits cut off to recover a decades-old overpayment, or disability beneficiaries attempting to work and finding their efforts rewarded with large overpayments. Innocent people can be badly hurt. And these injustices shock our shared sense of equity and good conscience as Americans.”
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SOCIAL SECURITY: COLA INCREASING BUT MEDICARE COSTS RISING TOO IN 2024
Overpayments overhaul includes other changes
The SSA also plans to reframe its guidance and procedures so that the burden of proof shifts away from the claimant in determining whether there is evidence that the claimant was at fault in causing the overpayment.
The agency also wants to make it easier for people to request a repayment waiver in case they believe they weren’t at fault or are unable to pay. To qualify, Social Security beneficiaries would only need to provide a verbal summary of their income, resources and expenses, and recipients of the means-tested SSI program would not need to provide even this summary.
The changes are part of the overhaul the SSA announced last year after coming under congressional scrutiny over the amount of overpayments it made. The SSA pays $1.4 trillion in benefits to more than 71 million people annually and gets it right in most instances. However, in 0.5% of cases, beneficiaries may have received overpayments of Social Security benefits. That number rises to 8% for overpayments of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. The agency is required by law to adjust benefits or recover debts.
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Keep more of your benefits in these states
More Social Security recipients may owe taxes on their benefits for the first time this tax season, according to the Senior Citizens League (TSCL).
In fact, 23% of survey participants who received Social Security for three years or more said they paid tax for the first time during the 2023 tax season. This percentage will likely increase this tax season because of the 8.7% COLA increase in 2023.
Social Security benefits are taxed when incomes exceed $25,000. Since the tax became effective in 1984, this fixed threshold has never been adjusted for inflation. Up to 85% of Social Security benefits can be taxable when income exceeds certain thresholds.
However, Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming have no income tax, which means that Social Security retirement benefits aren’t taxed at the state level, according to a recent AARP report.
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Cybersecurity and enterprise software stocks have been market dogs in 2026, with fears that AI will wipe out a wide range of companies in the enterprise space dominating the narrative. But they snapped a brutal losing streak this past week, joining in the broader market rally that saw all losses from the U.S.-Iran war regained by the Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500.
Cybersecurity has been “a victim of some of the AI-related headlines,” Christian Magoon, Amplify ETFs CEO, said on this week’s “ETF Edge.”
It wasn’t just niche cybersecurity names. Take Microsoft, for example, which was recently down close to 20% for the year. Its shares surged last week by 13%.
A big driver of the pummeling in software stocks was a rotation within tech by investors to AI infrastructure and semiconductors and some other names in large-cap tech, Magoon said, and since cybersecurity stocks and ETFs are heavily weighted towards software companies, they were left behind even as those businesses continue to grow on a fundamental basis.
But Wall Street now has become more bullish with the stocks at lower levels. Brent Thill, Jefferies tech analyst, said last week that the worst may be over for software stocks. “I think that this concept that software is dead, and then Anthropic and OpenAI are going to kill the entire industry, is just over-exaggerated,” he said on CNBC’s “Money Movers” on Wednesday.
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry wrote in a Substack post on Wednesday that he is becoming bullish about software stocks after the recent selloff. “Software stocks remain interesting because of accelerated extreme declines last week arising from a reflexive positive feedback loop between falling software stocks and changes in the market for their bank debt,” he wrote.
The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), is down about 12% since the beginning of the year, with top holdings including Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Akamai Technologies and CrowdStrike. But BUG was up 12% last week. The First Trust NASDAQ Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) is down 6% for the year, but up 9% in the past week.
Piper Sandler analyst Rob Owens reiterated an “overweight” rating on Palo Alto Networks which helped the stock pop 7% — it is now down roughly 6% on the year. Its peers saw similar moves, including CrowdStrike.
Performance of Global X cybersecurity ETF versus S&P 500 over past one-year period.
Magoon said expectations may have become too high in cybersecurity, and with a crowding effect among investors, solid results were not enough to to push stocks higher. But the down-and-then-back-up 2026 for the sector is also a reminder that when stocks fall sharply in a short period of time, opportunity may knock.
“Once you’re down over 10% in some of these subsectors, you start to see the contrarians start to say, ‘well, maybe I’ll take a look at this,'” Magoon said.
He said AI does add both opportunity and uncertainty to the cybersecurity equation, increasing demand but also introducing new competition. But he added, “I think the dip is good to buy in an AI-driven world,” specifically because the risks to companies may lead to more M&A in cyber names that benefits the stocks.
For now, investors may look for opportunity on the margins rather than rush back into beaten-up tech names. “I think investors are still going to remain underweight software,” Thill said.
But Magoon advises investors to at least take the reminder to keep an eye on niches in the market during pronounced downturns. “The best-performing are often the least bought and do the best over the next 12 months versus late-in-the-game piling on,” he said.
While that may have been a mindset that worked against the last investors into cybersecurity and enterprise software in mid-2025 when the negative sentiment started building, at least for now, it’s started working for the stocks in the sector again.
Meanwhile, this year’s biggest winner is also a good example of what can be an extended trade in either a bullish or bearish direction. Last year, institutional ownership of energy was at multi-year lows, Magoon said, referencing Bank of America data. “Reverse sentiment can be a great indicator,” he said.
But he cautioned that any selective buying of stocks that have dipped does have to contend with the risk that there is a potentially bigger drawdown in the market yet to come in 2026. That is because midterm election years historically have been marked by large drawdowns. “If you think it is bad right now, it could get a lot worse,” Magoon said. But he added that there’s a silver-lining in that data, too, for the patient investor. The market has posted very strong 12-month returns after midterm election drawdowns end. So, for investors with a longer-term time horizon and no need for short-term liquidity, Magoon said, “stick in there.”
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New innovation in the exchange-traded fund industry could come at a cost to investors during extreme conditions.
According to MFS Investment Management’s Jamie Harrison, ETFs involved in increasingly complex derivatives and less transparent markets may be in uncharted territory when it comes to violent downturns.
“Those would be something that you’d want to keep an eye on as volatility ramps up,” the firm’s head of ETF capital markets told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “As innovation continues to increase at a rapid pace within the ETF wrapper, [it’s] definitely something that we advise our clients to be really front-footed about… Lack of transparency could absolutely be an issue if we’re going to start seeing some deep sell-offs.”
His firm has been around since 1924 and is known for inventing the open-end mutual fund. Last year, ETF.com named MFS Investment Management as the best new ETF issuer.
“It’s important to do due diligence on the portfolio,” he said. “Having a firm that has deep partnerships, deep bench of subject matter experts that plays with the A-team in terms of the Street and liquidity providers available [are] super important.”
Liquidity as the real issue?
Harrison suggested the real issue is liquidity, particularly during a steep sell-off.
“We’ve all seen the news and the headlines around potential private credit ETFs. That picture becomes much more murky,” he added. “It’s up to advisors, to investors [and] to clients to really dig in and look under the hood and engage with their issuers.”
He noted investors will have to ask some tough questions.
“What does this look like in a 20% drawdown? How does this liquidity facility work? Am I going to be able to get in? Am I going to be able to get out? And if I’m able to get out, am I able to get out at a price that’s tight to NAV [net asset value], and what’s the infrastructure at your shop in terms of managing that consideration for me,” said Harrison.
Amplify ETFs’ Christian Magoon is also concerned about these newer ETF strategies could weather a monster drawdown. He listed private credit as a red flag.
“If your ETF owns private credit, I think it’s worth taking a look at, kind of what the standards are around liquidity and how that ETF is trading, because that should be a bit of a mismatch between the trading pace of ETFs and the underlying asset,” the firm’s CEO said in the same interview.
Magoon also highlighted potential issues surrounding equity-linked notes. The notes provide fixed income security while offering potentially higher returns linked to stocks or equity indexes.
“Those could potentially be in stress due to redemptions and the underlying credit risk. That’s another kind of unique derivative,” Magoon said. “I would very closely look at any ETF that has equity-linked notes should we get into a major drawdown or there be a contagion in private credit or something related to the banking system.”
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