Can I get US Social Security while living in Australia?

Two rules, and living in Australia meets one of them

If you are a United States citizen, where you live does not matter. The Social Security Administration's manual says alien nonpayment "does not apply to" United States citizens and naturalised citizens. Your payments follow you to Australia and stay with you.

If you are not a citizen, the starting position is stricter. The manual states that "an alien residing outside the United States for six full consecutive calendar months cannot be paid benefits beginning with the seventh month of their absence."

If you are a US citizen

Paid, however long you are away

If you are not

PaidSuspended, unless an exception applies

7th monthPayments stop

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That is the rule that stops a New Zealand citizen living in New Zealand. In Australia it almost never bites, for the reason in the next section.

Living here is an exception on its own

The United States and Australia have a social security agreement. In the Administration's words, "The Agreement with Australia became effective October 1, 2002."

Having an agreement switches off the six month rule for people who live in the country. The manual is specific about Australia: non-citizens "are exempt from suspension if they reside in a country with which the United States has a Totalization Agreement. This exemption applies to residents of Australia who receive regular retirement, survivors or disability insurance benefits as well as those who receive Totalization benefits."

Note what it turns on. The general exception applies when "The alien is a resident or a citizen of a foreign country with which the United States has a Social Security agreement." Resident or citizen. A New Zealander, a Briton or anyone else who has made their home in Australia is covered by living here, whatever passport they hold.

What counts as living here

Not a holiday. The Administration treats a person as resident "when the person has established a home in that country intending to remain there permanently or for an indefinite period of time", and says arriving "as a visitor or tourist with no intention of establishing a home in that country would not begin a period of residence."

Travel does not undo it. "An absence of six months or less is considered temporary." A longer absence can still leave your residence intact, but only with evidence you mean to keep it, such as keeping a home or family ties that warrant your return.

The exemption starts the month after the month you become resident, and ends the month after the month you give residence up. From then on, the ordinary six month rule applies again.

If your residence is questioned, the Administration can ask about your date of arrival, the type of visa you entered on, how long you intend to stay, and where you live.

Australian citizens have a second way through

The Administration publishes a country-by-country chart of which citizenship-based exceptions apply. Australia reads Yes for the social insurance exception, effective September 2001.

That exception follows the passport rather than the address. It applies, in the manual's words, "even if the citizen of the social insurance country is living in a country of which they are not a citizen." So an Australian citizen who has worked in the United States can be paid outside the United States without living in Australia, subject to one catch for family members, below.

The same chart marks the ten year residence and forty quarter exceptions with a dash for Australia, which the manual says "indicates that particular exception does not apply to citizens of the country". For most Australian citizens that makes no practical difference, because the social insurance exception is already doing the work.

If you are claiming as a husband, wife, widow, widower or child

Dependants and survivors first eligible after 1984 normally have to meet an exception and also have lived in the United States for five years. The agreement lifts that too, with a twist the Administration calls out:

The Agreement with Australia is the first U.S. agreement that includes such a limitation. Under the Agreement, all residents of Australia are exempt from the U.S. residency requirements, but Australian citizens who do not reside in the United States or Australia are only exempt if they reside in another country with which the U.S. has a Totalization agreement.

So if your entitlement comes through someone else's work, living in Australia clears the five year test. Being an Australian citizen living in, say, New Zealand does not, because New Zealand has no agreement with the United States. And the social insurance exception on its own does not help a dependant or survivor with the five year test: the manual says they "must meet the 5–year residency requirement for this exception".

One extra test for some non-citizen workers

This applies to the worker's record, not to where anyone lives. If you are not a US citizen and your Social Security number was first assigned on or after 1 January 2004, the Social Security Protection Act of 2004 adds a condition. You must either have been issued a number for work purposes at some point from 1 January 2004, or have been admitted to the United States at any time as a business visitor (B-1) or as crew (D-1 or D-2).

If neither is true, the manual says you are "not fully or currently insured", even with enough credits, and claims on your record by family members fail with it. The manual flags this beside the agreement exception, so living in Australia does not get around it.

How much: your US record, with nothing taken off for Australia

A regular benefit comes from your US earnings. You need forty credits to qualify, and the amount is worked out from your best thirty-five years through a formula that pays proportionally more on lower earnings. That calculation has a guide of its own, including why years spent working in Australia count as zeros in the average.

What no longer happens is a cut for having an Australian pension. On 5 January 2025 the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 was signed. The Administration's bulletin states that "The law repeals the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO) provision", and that "The law applies with respect to benefits payable for months after December 2023." Its explainer names, among the people whose benefits the law increases, some of those "whose work had been covered by a foreign social security system".

Whether Australian super was ever caught by the old rule has its own guide.

If you are short of forty credits

This is where the agreement can decide whether there is a US benefit at all, not just whether it keeps arriving.

The manual sets the floor: if you have "at least six U.S. quarters of coverage (QCs) but not enough to receive regular U.S. benefits", the Administration "can count the NH's years of 'working life residence' in Australia". Working life residence means "periods of residence in Australia between age 16 and normal retirement age during which the worker was employed or self-employed".

Australian time is converted at one US quarter "for every three months or remaining fraction" of working life residence in a calendar year, with no more than four quarters for any year and no double counting of a quarter already credited in the United States.

It only works one way round. "If the NH has enough QCs under the U.S. system to receive regular U.S. benefits, SSA cannot count Australian years". Australian years can help you qualify. They cannot be added to a record that already qualifies.

What a benefit under the agreement is worth

Less than a full one, by design. The Administration works it out in four steps:

1. A theoretical full career earnings record is built from your actual US earnings relative to average earnings.
2. A theoretical benefit, the primary insurance amount, is worked out from that record.
3. That amount is multiplied by a pro rata fraction.
4. The monthly payment is based on the result.

The fraction is your US quarters of coverage, based on actual covered earnings, multiplied by three to turn them into months, divided by the number of divisor months used in the theoretical calculation.

Australian years appear nowhere in that fraction. They get you through the door, and your US quarters decide how far in. As an illustration only: twenty US quarters is sixty months, and if the theoretical calculation used thirty-five years, or 420 months, the fraction would be sixty over 420, or one seventh of the theoretical amount.

Claiming from Australia

You do not have to deal with the United States directly to start. Services Australia's factsheet for the agreement says that from Australia you get a US claim form by calling its International Services line, and lodge it by taking the form and your documents "to your nearest Services Australia Service Centre", or by mail. The Administration's own page confirms the arrangement: "You can apply with one country and ask to have your application considered as a claim for benefits from the other country."

The decision is still American. "The US social insurance agency makes all decisions about US payments." For people in Australia, the Social Security Administration office Services Australia lists is in Manila.

The Administration's Payments Abroad Screening Tool walks through whether payments continue for your own combination of citizenship and country.

Being paid here, and what Australia does with it

Australia is on the Administration's list of countries where international direct deposit is available, so payment can go into an Australian account.

Once it arrives, it counts for the Age Pension. Australia treats a US Social Security payment as income, measured before US tax and converted each month, and it reduces the Age Pension at 50 cents in the dollar above the free area, or dollar for dollar for some New Zealanders. That interaction is set out in full here.

Where it is taxed

In the United States, not Australia. Article 18(2) of the tax treaty between the two countries says:

Social Security payments and other public pensions paid by one of the Contracting States to an individual who is a resident of the other Contracting State or a citizen of the United States shall be taxable only in the first-mentioned State.

The Australian Taxation Office's decision on exactly this point, still marked current, is that a US Social Security benefit received by an Australian resident "is therefore not assessable income under section 6-5 of the ITAA 1997, but is subject to tax in the USA." Note the contrast with the Age Pension income test above, which does count it.

What happens on the US side depends on your status there:

• If you are a US citizen, the Administration "will not withhold tax from your benefits", and your worldwide income is subject to US tax "regardless of where you live".
• If you are a nonresident alien for US tax, the Administration "is required to withhold a 30 percent flat income tax from 85 percent" of the benefit, which it describes as "a withholding of 25.5 percent of your monthly benefit", unless a treaty exempts it or lowers the rate. The IRS lists the treaty countries whose residents are exempt from US tax on their benefits. Australia is not one of them.

What this guide does not tell you

It does not tell you your number. Only the Administration holds your earnings record, and a benefit under the agreement depends on it even more than a regular one.

It does not cover claiming the Australian Age Pension using US coverage, which the same agreement also allows, Medicare, or how much of a benefit a US citizen owes US tax on.

It does not cover disability benefits beyond noting that the residence exemption applies to them.

The Administration's page on the Australia agreement carries a 2019 date, but quotes 2022 credit figures and Australian pension ages from 2002. The manual sections cited here are the more current statement of the rules, and anything close to a line in your own case is decided by the Administration, not a calculator.