SSA sent erroneous tax information; new mailing attempts to correct problems

Around 2.7 million people have incorrect Social Security paymentinformation on a needed tax document, the Social SecurityAdministration said Thursday as the agency moved quickly to mail outcorrections.  The document affected is the Social Security BenefitStatement, or Form SSA-1099. That document is needed by Social Securityrecipients to complete their federal income tax return and to find outwhether their benefits are subject to income tax.  The SocialSecurity Administration mailed those statements to 53 million people inJanuary. It goes to people who received a Social Security paymentduring the previous calendar year.  The agency said a computerprogramming error caused Medicare Part C and/or Part D premiumdeduction amounts, and some garnishment deduction amounts, for 2006 tobe included in the amounts reported for 2007.  That meant the”Benefits for 2007″ fields, which are boxes 3 and 5 of the SSA-1099,and the “Description of Amount in Box 3” field had incorrect amountsfor the affected people.  Corrected SSA-1099s and an apology will be in the mail by Friday, the agency said. The programming error also has been fixed.  Thecorrected SSA-1099 will have “Corrected Notice” on the envelope and”Corrected Tax Information” on the SSA-1099 itself in red typeface.

Source/more:  Ap/Google, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jdO6jPNnbdyp3dwoArVlnfCtJdnwD8UCI0TO0