@kt3081962 wrote:
I am semi retired. I remember getting the social security booklets in the mail for both myself and my husband . I am a widow. I am on survivors benefits still.
All of the incomes every year since the 1970s are inaccurate in those booklets.
I called Social security and asked them why our incomes reported are so much lower than we made. They said they get all their information from the IRS. I know what I made in 1997 and 1998 as I had to pay quarterly estimates based on my predicted income per my tax account. My husband made a lot more than those yearly incomes also reported on the social security retirement booklet.
So one year I earned $65,000. SSI had me earning about $35,000. Over the years I thought about digging everything up but I had moved so much that i ended shredding all but the last 5 years of taxes and so on.
If you are now receiving Survivors Benefits - those are the benefits from your deceased husband - NOT your own benefits from your own work record.
If you have continued to work and have never received your own benefits from your own work record then the history of your work should still be on your own Social Security file. Those Social Security earnings records are still done each year BUT they are only available online - You need to register for your "mySocialSecurity" account and the information should be there.
SSA.gov - Information on How To Create a my Social Security Account
SSA.gov - Create An Account: my Social Security
SSA.gov 0 my Social Security
from the above link ~
With your free, personal my Social Security account, you can receive personalized estimates of future benefits based on your real earnings, see your latest Statement, and review your earnings history. It even makes it easy to request a replacement Social Security Card or check the status of an application, from anywhere!
Earnings are reported individually - not as a couple (you keep saying "we") even if you might have been in business together - each person in the couple has to have their earnings separately reported either as W-2 earnings OR on Schedule SE when taxes are reported annually.
If you had W-2 earning, your employer was responsible for sending your payroll deductions for SS & Medicare to the IRS and also their MATCHED amount. The employer makes a deposit to a US Treasury account and submits FORM 941 (Employer's Quarterly Federal Tax Return), the payment of employee withholdings and the employers matched amount to the IRS. At the end of each year, the employer prepares W-2's for each of the employees and submits a copy of this document along with their W-3 to the Social Security Administration and the IRS. Form W-3 is a document used by the IRS and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to summarize and transmit an employer's W-2 forms. The IRS and SSA use Form W-3 to track the wages, salary, commission, tips, and other compensation employers pay out throughout the year.
The IRS and the Social Security Administration make sure that these all balance and that Social Security numbers and amounts are accurately reported by the employer. Course if the income is not reported or withholdings not paid - that is criminal and they go after the employer.
Since you spoke about paying quarterly estimates, may I ask if you / your husband or both of you were self employed or were you independent contractors? Did you receive a W-2 or a 1099 to report your earnings?
I will be happy to help you more but it is actually pretty impossible for you to make $ 65,000 and only have $ 35,000 reported for SS and Medicare unless there is something else going on.
Who (generally) were you and / or your husband working for - ? Under what capacity - independent contractor, employee.
Why were you making quarterly tax filings? - did the entity that you were working for NOT deduct taxes - if they didn't, then they probably didn't withhold from you your share of SS and Medicare payroll taxes and perhaps didn't pay the employer share either.
It's Always Something . . . . Roseanna Roseannadanna