Thread: Border Street: Social Security numbers fuel fake dance with

Border Street: Social Security numbers fuel fake dance with IRS
March 12, 2007

Between them, the Construction Worker and his Fast-Food Worker Wife worked five jobs last year using three different Social Security numbers. Two were fake. One for him. One for her. The third belonged to a U.S. citizen friend. Since the Construction Worker was using the friend's identification, he says it will be up to the friend to file income taxes.

I don't even see the W-2, the Construction Worker says. It goes to another address.

That was the arrangement. The Construction Worker earns the paycheck. The friend gets the tax bill or refund and the Social Security work credits.

I don't know if he'll file, the Construction Worker says.

He's living in Mexico, the Fast-Food Worker Wife says.

Their own tax forms are spread out on their dining room table in their little house on Border Street. Six years of 1040A forms, a numeric picture of their increasing prosperity.

The Construction Worker came to Denver from Mexico in the fall of 2000. He took a construction job with a fake Social Security card he bought for $70. He earned almost $10,000. He paid $415 in federal taxes and $600 in Social Security taxes. He claimed his wife and two children as dependents. They were still in Mexico.

His wife joined him the following year. Together, they made about $24,000. They paid $450 in federal taxes and $1,475 in Social Security. They paid into Medicare.

In 2002, they made $25,000. Paid taxes, Social Security, Medicare.

In 2003, she went back to Mexico and brought back their children. She became a stay-at-home mother. He began working in a fast-food restaurant under his friend's name and Social Security number. He worked a couple of construction jobs under the fake number, too. He took a second fast-food job in 2005 with the fake number. From 2003 to 2005, almost all of his pay was earned under the friend's identification. With the fake numbers, he earned an average of less than $10,000 each of the three years.

They hadn't been filing their taxes. Why should we, the Fast-Food Worker Wife replied when a friend asked her about it. We're not citizens; we're not legal residents.

It doesn't matter, the friend said. Of course, by then, the Fast-Food Worker Wife says, everyone knew the politicians in Washington were saying that only those illegal immigrants who had been working and paying taxes and staying out of trouble might be able to stay here legally. This news created a minor run on the tax preparation business.

So, the Construction Worker and his Fast-Food Worker Wife went about getting copies of their old W-2s and received taxpayer identification numbers for their children. They gave five years' worth of information to their tax preparer last year. She plugged it all into a computer program, which informed them they were entitled to a $415 refund for 2000 and had broken even in the following years.

The Internal Revenue Service begged to differ. It began sending the couple letters last fall saying they would not be getting a refund (filed too late) and instead owed more than $2,000.

Other letters followed. The IRS had recalculated based on updated information, and the couple would receive a refund of $1,200 for one year, but would still have to pay $900 for another.

The letters sit in stacks. The words urgent and levy and penalties pop from them.

The Fast Food Worker Wife slumps at the table, head in her hands, confused. The letters are written in English, which the Fast-Food Worker Wife cannot read and the Construction Worker can read only well enough to understand that one letter says one thing and another says something else.

Had Longtime Eddie next door witnessed the scene, he may have sympathized - as that very morning he nearly burned down his kitchen, his ancient percolator coffee pot forgotten on his ancient stove, while he documented his own contradictory letters from the Social Security Administration.

That his illegal immigrant neighbors are paying into that Social Security system does not escape him. Nor does their work. Work is what they all share on Border Street, a lifetime behind shovels and brooms and counters and the wheels of big trucks. Work is what binds them and what divides them. I did that job, Longtime Eddie is fond of saying, before all of them came.

Call them, the Fast Food Worker Wife urges her husband, holding one of the IRS letters in her hand. Figure out what's going on. It's Sunday; they're closed, he says. Maybe, she says.

Do they speak Spanish? he asks. He calls. They're closed, but there is a line for Spanish speakers. I'll call tomorrow, he says.

The Fast-Food Worker Wife went to the tax preparer again last week to file their 2006 taxes. Together, the couple earned $40,000, but the form reports only $28,000, the amount they earned under the fake numbers. The remaining $12,000 will show up on the citizen friend's W-2 and will become his business.

They paid $715 in federal taxes and $1,700 in Social Security. The tax preparer tells them they'll get a $2,000 refund this year.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/n ... 45,00.html

Wow---all I can say is WOW!

And these are the poor hard working THIEVES we are supposed to feel sorry for! aHHHHHHHH!

I wouldn't be surprised if fast food worker stay at home mom has another number that she uses for welfare. Another possibility I wouldn't be surprised about is that she pretends to be living alone with her children and there are no other adults in the house. This way she can get more freebies.