Thread: Report Says IRS Undermines SSA's Fight Against Illegal Aliens’ Felonious Use of Socia

NumbersUSA

Report Says IRS Undermines SSA's Fight Against Illegal Aliens’ Felonious Use of Social Security Numbers

Friday, August 30, 2013, 3:13 PM EDT


CNSNews reports that the Social Security Administration’s Inspector General said his agency’s efforts to stop illegal aliens from using fraudulent or stolen Social Security Numbers has been “hindered” by the Internal Revenue Service's failure to penalize employers who file W-2s on which the Social Security Number and name do not match SSA records.

The SSA IG issued an audit report in August that examined “no-matches” on W-2 forms, which are commonly believed to represent instances in which employers report the income of illegal aliens. The report cited one senior IRS employment tax official as acknowledging that “unauthorized noncitizens accounted for a high percentage of inaccurate wage reporting.”

The IG examined the most recent data and searched for the 100 employers who had the largest number of no-matches and the 100 employers (minimum 100 employees) who filed the most no-matches as a percentage of their payrolls. The employers in both categories together filed 2,477,546 no-match W-2s between tax years 2007 and 2009. The employer with the worst record filed 117,792 no-matches and the one with the worst filing percentage had submitted 98 percent of its W-2s with no-matches.

The report found that 20 percent of the Social Security Numbers used in no-match cases were not real – e.g., 42,164 had numbers that were all zeros. The remaining 80 percent belonged to citizens or legal residents. “About 380,000 of these belonged to young children, and about 258,000 belonged to deceased individuals,” the report said.

When the SSA is not able to find a no-match employee, it credits the person’s Social Security taxes to the “Earnings Suspense File” (ESF). In 2007, the ESF was credited $90.7 billion from the wages under 11 million W-2s. The ESF received $87.5 billion in 2008 and $73.4 billion in 2009.

The report said SSA staff thought employers were unafraid to file bad W-2s because they knew noone would pursue them. “SSA staff told us employers hired unauthorized workers because nothing prevented them from doing so. That is, employers know SSA had no legal authority to levy fines and penalties, and they were not concerned about potential IRS sanctions,” the report said. “SSA staff believed applying penalties would deter SSN misuse.”

Some employers told the IG they hired illegal aliens. “Several of the employers and industry associations we contacted acknowledged that unauthorized noncitizens contributed to SSN misuse,” said the report. “For example, one employer told us his and many restaurants would close if they did not hire unauthorized noncitizens.”

The report also focused on problems that prevented the SSA from fighting SSN misuse. In addition to the IRS’ failure to impose penalties, the report cited employers’ resistance to using E-Verify and a provision in the Internal Revenue Code that prevents the SSA from sharing no-match information with the Department of Homeland Security.

Illegal aliens who misuse a Social Security Number can charged with a felony. According to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, “The Social Security Act provides that whoever, with the intent to deceive, falsely represents a number to be his or her SSN when, in fact, that number was not assigned to that person, shall be guilty of a felony and subject to a fine.”

https://www.numbersusa.com/content/n...ious-use-socia

Related-- http://www.alipac.us/f12/ig-irs-%91h...5/#post1364313