Treasury Department regulations prohibit sending payments to, or on behalf of, any beneficiary residing in Cuba or North Korea. An individual, who is neither a citizen nor national of the United States, cannot be a qualified individual for any month he or she resides in a country to which payment is barred by Treasury Department regulations. While payments may accrue to a U.S. citizen or national, no payments accrue to an individual who is not a citizen or national of the United States for any month in which he or she resides in a country to which payment is barred by Treasury Department regulations.

Social Security restrictions prohibit sending payments to beneficiaries in Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan which were in the former Soviet Union. No payment can be made to an individual in these countries because arrangements cannot be made for the orderly distribution of checks. In addition, SSA has been unable to secure assurance from the appropriate officials in those countries of free access to beneficiaries and vital statistics records in those countries. However, in an effort to balance SSA's need to assure the integrity of its payments to beneficiaries in those countries against its inability to get assurances of the needed access, SSA has implemented a special procedure that permits the payment of benefits to certain eligible beneficiaries in those countries (see RS 02650.040).