SSA conducts two vast correspondence programs aimed at fixing "no-match" W-2s. One is called "decentralized correspondence" (DECOR). It sends a letter to the employee address listed on the W-2 asking the employee to fix the discrepancy. If the employee's address is unavailable or incorrect, DECOR sends a letter to the employer who filed the W-2. In tax year 2002, SSA mailed 7.6 million DECOR letters to employees and 1.9 million to employers.
The other program is called "educational correspondence" (EDCOR). It sends a letter to every employer who files more than 10 no-match W-2s in a given year if they equal at least 0.5 percent of the employer's total W-2s. (Prior to 2002, they had to equal at least 10 percent of the employer's total).
Employers that are egregious filers of no-match W-2s are bombarded by notifications. In 2002, the inspector general's audit discovered, 95 U.S. employers received 1,000 or more DECOR letters.
This can have a positive impact on an honest employer. For example, a New York-based "staffing company," the audit report said, received 13,954 DECOR letters and one EDCOR letter in 2002. The auditors contacted the New York SSA office and "determined that this employer is currently participating in the Social Security Number Verification System (SSNVS) program," which "is an online service that enables employers and submitters to verify employee names and SSNs with information in SSA's records for the W-2 reporting purposes."
This system has been available nationwide since June 2005. Since 1983, however, SSA has also operated an "Employee Verification Service," allowing employers to check SSNs by phone. Also, the 1996 immigration law initiated Basic Pilot, a joint SSA and Department of Homeland Security employee verification program that has been available in all 50 states since 2004.
Even without a new massive immigration bill, employers who want to obey the law can. A government that wants to enforce it could.
I have written before about two lists produced by SSA that -- if not for Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code -- could provide Homeland Security with a detailed map to the worksites of employers who routinely file massive numbers of "no-match" W-2s. One list, produced annually, identifies every employer who filed more than 100 no-match W-2s the year before. The other, produced by SSA's inspector general in 2004, lists the 100 employers who filed the most no-match W-2s from 1997-2001.
Three of these employers filed more than 100,000 no-match W-2s over five years. Ten had more than 70 percent of their W-2s in the no-match file.
Congress should immediately pass a simple law mandating that SSA hand over these lists to DHS and that DHS investigate the most egregious filers of no-match W-2s.
Who knows? They might discover that, like that child born in 1991, you, too, have been holding down several hundred jobs you didn't know about.