my sister lives right now in bosnia and hercegovina and she have social security after 65 and recently they asked her did she work anywhere before US and she said she did send them back paper she reciving about 150$ working 15 years in Bosnia and they cut her ss from 300$ to 180 after she said she worked before,i dont understend why?
thank you so much!Daniela and yes she is US citizen!

Hi. It sounds like your sister's U.S. benefits were reduced due to the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP). If a person receives a pension that's based on their earnings that weren't subject to U.S. Social Security taxes, WEP can cause their U.S. Social Security retirement or disability benefit rate to be calculated using a less generous computation formula than the one that's normally used (https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10045.pdf).

Therefore, since your sister didn't pay U.S. Social Security taxes on the earnings on which her Bosnian pension is based, that pension is likely the reason that her U.S. benefits were lowered. There is a WEP guarantee provision that limits any reduction in the person's U.S. benefit rate to no more than half of the gross amount of their non-covered pension. I don't have enough information about your sister's benefits to know if her benefit rate has been correctly calculated, but if your sister thinks that the reduction in her benefit rate is incorrect she can file an appeal. The following Social Security website has instructions for how to go about filing an appeal: https://www.ssa.gov/apply/appeal-decision-we-made.

Best, Jerry