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Holiday gifts and SSI: what counts and what doesn't

Cash, gift cards and wrapped presents are each treated differently for someone on SSI. Here's how SSA counts each one, and what to write down this season.

A box wrapped in dark gray paper, tied with a wide burlap ribbon and twine, with a round brown gift tag printed with a white snowflake.
Photo by David Everett Strickler on Unsplash

For someone on SSI, a holiday gift of cash counts as income. So does a gift card that can buy food or shelter, or that can be resold. A present like a coat or a lamp usually doesn't count at all.

Everything here is about SSI, the program that counts the person's income and resources.

Cash, and the $60 SSA leaves out each quarter

SSA counts a gift of cash as unearned income in the month it arrives. It also leaves out the first $60 of unearned income in a calendar quarter that's infrequent or irregular.

Income is infrequent if it comes only once in a calendar quarter from a single source, and that kind of income didn't also come in the month before or the month after. A source can be a person, a household or an organization. Income is irregular if the person couldn't reasonably expect to receive it.

The $60 covers the whole quarter, not each gift, and only the first $60 is left out. SSA's own manual works through a $100 birthday gift: $60 is excluded and $40 counts.

October, November and December are one calendar quarter. So a check from an aunt in November and cash from a neighbor in December draw on the same $60, if both qualify. Two gifts from the same person in back-to-back months aren't infrequent under that definition, though they can still be irregular if nobody expected them.

Gift cards

A gift card or gift certificate is income in the month it's received if it can be used to buy food or shelter, or if it can be resold. One that can do neither isn't income. SSA's manual gives a certificate for an office-supply store as its example of one that doesn't count.

The $60 exclusion can cover a gift card too. The manual's example is a $50 birthday card, excluded as infrequent or irregular income. Whatever is left unspent on a card becomes a resource starting the month after it arrived.

Wrapped presents

A gift of a thing, other than food or shelter, isn't income if it would be an excluded resource once the person kept it into the next month. Household goods and personal effects are excluded resources regardless of their value.

Household goods are things in or near the home that the person uses regularly. Personal effects are things they ordinarily wear or carry. So a winter coat, a radio for their room, or a watch they wear every day isn't income.

The exception is something acquired for its value or as an investment. SSA doesn't treat that as a personal effect, so jewelry kept for its value, or a collectible, can count as a resource.

When it shows up

SSA generally figures a month's SSI from the person's countable income two months earlier. So a December gift that counts would usually show up in the February payment.

Money received in a month is income for that month. Whatever is still held into the next month is looked at as a resource. Cash from December that's still in the account at the first moment of January counts toward the resource limit: $2,000 for one person, $3,000 for a couple.

An example with round numbers. A cousin gives $100 in December, and it's the only gift of the quarter. $60 is excluded and $40 is counted as December income. If $50 of it is left on January 1, that $50 is part of the balance SSA counts that day.

Telling SSA, and writing it down

A change in income is one of the things SSA asks to be told about. A report is late if it isn't made within 10 days after the close of the month the change happened. For a December gift, that's January 10.

Write down who gave it, the date, the amount, and whether it was cash, a card or a thing. For a gift card, a photo of the front showing the store and the amount is enough.

In PayeeKit

If a cash gift goes into the account you track in PayeeKit, turn on Other income in the person's Details and record the gift as a deposit from it, with the giver in the note. It stays out of the benefits total, and anything still there at the end of the month is part of the balance the resource watch shows for the 1st.

Sources

PayeeKit is an iPhone ledger for family representative payees and guardians. See how it works.

This post is general information, not advice about anyone's situation. SSA decides what affects a person's benefits, and your notices and SSA's own pages are the final word.