Supporting Statement--0576F

Supporting Statement for Form SSA-6233

Representative Payee Report of Benefits and Dedicated Account

20 CFR 416.546, 416.635, 416.640, 416.665

OMB No. 0960-0576

A. Justification

1. Section 1631(a) of the Social Security Act as well as 20 CFR 416.546 and 416.640 of the Code of Federal Regulations provide that representative payees establish and maintain in a financial institution a separate (i.e., “dedicated”) account when a blind/disabled child under age 18 is eligible for certain past-due Supplemental Security Income (SSI) monthly payments on or after August 23, 1996. Certain subsequent past-due benefits and underpayments may also be deposited into the dedicated account at the option of the payee. The use of funds from the account is restricted to specific purchases. Representative payees with dedicated accounts must report annually on the activity of funds in the account to ensure deposits and expenditures are in compliance with the law. This reporting requirement remains in effect until the account is depleted or until eligibility for benefits terminates.

Representative payees required to establish and maintain dedicated accounts on behalf of SSI beneficiaries are required under existing regulations 20 CFR 416.635 and 416.665 to submit an annual accounting on the use of benefits to ensure the beneficiary’s current maintenance and personal needs are being met. Form SSA-6233, Representative Payee Report of Benefits and Dedicated Account, is used to collect this information as well in order to reduce the burden on the representative payees who would otherwise need to complete two monitoring reports.

2. SSA needs the information collected on the SSA-6233 to determine if the items and/or services purchased with dedicated account funds are permitted expenditures. SSA also uses the information on the SSA-6233 to determine if funds are commingled and should count as resources. The respondents are representative payees for SSI beneficiaries.

3. Presently, SSA lacks the capability to collect this information electronically. That is, there is neither a fully functional, interactive version of the SSA-6233 for representative payees to use when responding to reporting requests, nor a means for SSA to electronically receive, process and review electronic responses, if they existed. Recently, however, the Office of Systems received funding to begin an extensive redesign of the payee accounting process. Although the redesign is expected to take several years to complete, a portion of it will address online representative payee reporting. At this time, Systems is working on other priorities within the project and there is no projected timeframe for the implementation of electronic, online payee reporting. When online reporting is addressed by the Office of Systems in this redesign, it is expected that the payee report forms which have a higher volume use – the SSA-623, SSA-6230, and SSA-6234 – will be the first forms to be made available online. The SSA-6233, because of its relatively low volume will likely not be addressed until later.

4. The nature of the information being collected and the manner in which it is collected preclude duplication. There is no other collection instrument used by SSA that collects data similar to that collected here.

5. The collection of information could have an impact on small businesses serving as representative payees. However, we have minimized the burden by incorporating YES and NO responses where feasible.

6. Through the SSA-6233 monitoring process, any unauthorized expenditures made knowingly by the payee constitutes “misapplication” of funds and are recoverable from the payee on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The collection of information is required annually by statute; therefore not collecting the information is against the law. Also, since this information is collected annually by law, it cannot be collected less frequently. There are no technical or legal obstacles that prevent burden reduction.

7. There are no special circumstances that would cause this information collection to be conducted in a manner that is not consistent with 5 CFR 1320.5.

8. The 60-day advance Federal Register Notice was published on November 1, 2006 at 71 FR 64327, and SSA has received no public comments. The second Notice was published on December 15, 2006 at 71 FR 75607. There have been no outside consultations with members of the public.

9. SSA provides no payments or gifts to the respondents.

10. The information requested is protected and held confidential in accordance with 42 U.S.C. 1306, 20 CFR 401 and 402, 5 U.S.C. 552 (Freedom of Information Act), 5 U.S.C. 552a (Privacy Act of 1974) and OMB Circular No. A-130.

11. The information collection does not contain any questions of a sensitive nature.

12. The projected number of representative payees with dedicated accounts is approximately 30, 000 per year. The estimated time to complete the SSA-6233 report is 20 minutes; therefore the total burden is 10, 000 hours. The total burden is reflected as burden hours, and no separate cost burden has been calculated.

13. There is no known cost burden to respondents.

14. The annual cost to the Federal Government is approximately $231,000. This estimate is a projection of the costs for printing and distributing the collection instrument and for collecting the information.

15. There are no changes in the public reporting burden.

16. The results of the information collection will not be published.

17. OMB has granted SSA an exemption from the requirement that the expiration date for OMB approval be printed on its program forms. SSA produces millions of public-use forms, many of which have a life cycle longer than that of an OMB approval. SSA does not periodically revise and reprint its public-use forms (e.g., on an annual basis). This exemption was granted so that otherwise useable editions of forms would not be taken out of circulation because the expiration date had been reached. In addition, Government waste has been avoided because stocks of forms will not have to be destroyed and reprinted.

18. SSA is not requesting an exception to the certification requirements at 5 CFR 1320.9 and related provisions at 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).

B. Collections of Information Employing Statistical Methods

Statistical methods are not used for this information collection.