Over the years we have seen the issue of Social Security Administration’s use of no-match letters come and go. For the past few years, SSA has chosen to send out the letters informing employers that the names and SSN of particular employees didn’t match on their filings. As an example here in our office, we received a no-match letter when two numbers were transposed on MY social security number.

There are any number of reasons that a SSN and a name don’t match. Just one example is above but others are things like a woman who got married and didn’t change her name with SSA. There are also misspellings and issues with hyphenated names that come about often. Employers in high seasonality businesses such as ours often wonder if this is an indication of the legal status of the affected employees.

Guidance for employers has also been mixed over the years as language in the letters changed and often these employees are not around when the letter comes. This puts employers in a tough situation that makes many uncomfortable as to how to proceed. This will not be a problem for the time being. The SSA has said recently they will not be issuing Name Number Mismatch letters for now.

IF, for some reason you receive a letter like this, please let us know. We can help you with how to deal with these letters but we don’t expect any further letters for this year. The administration is exploring ways to combat this issue but it will be a while before a solution is finalized.

DSF