Missing your SSA-1099? Here’s How to Get It

Photo courtesy of Kyle Szegedi via Unsplash.com.

The Social Security Administration has a lot on their plate. Along with handling the tax rolls from some 150 million-plus wage earners, servicing around 50 million retirees and surviving spouses and 11 million-plus disabled workers and dependents, there are 10,000 baby boomers reaching retirement age each day. These folks (current recipients of benefits and newly-eligible) are generating nearly half-million phone calls a day to SSA’s 800 number, and nearly 200,000 per day visiting the local offices. Every day.

And they’re doing all this on administrative expenses of less than 1% of all the money they handle.

Much has been written about what the SSA is not capable of doing – such as advising folks on the best way to file – but little has been written about what they are doing well. One of those things is their website.  

On the SSA website there are some very good resources to help you get a better understanding of your benefits and make some decisions about how to claim them. In addition, the calculators on the site are a very good place to start figuring out your best strategy.

Form SSA-1099 Available on SocialSecurity.gov

Recently though, SSA added another great option to their menu of resources on the website: the ability to download and print a replacement copy of the SSA-1099 form. This is the bedsheet-length form that benefit recipients receive after having drawn benefits in the prior year. This form is necessary to calculate your income tax return each year*.

In the past if you mislaid your SSA-1099 form you would need to call the SSA and have them generate a new one for you, and this process can be quite lengthy. This delay could cause late-in-the-season tax filers to miss the deadline for filing.

Below is a copy of an announcement that I received recently regarding this new feature on SSA’s website:

Dear Colleague:

We are excited to announce that we have a new service available.  Social Security beneficiaries can now view and print their SSA-1099 and SSA-1042S online via their personal my Social Securityaccounts.

Tax season is here, and many beneficiaries need a SSA-1099 or a SSA-1042S to complete their tax returns. If your clients receive Social Security benefits and did not receive or misplaced their SSA-1099 or SSA-1042S, encourage them to save time and create a my Social Security account to get instant replacements.

Setting up an account is easy, secure, and convenient. Your clients just need to go to www.socialsecurity.gov/myaccount. With a my Social Security account, they can:

• Get a benefit verification letter;
• Check their benefit and payment information and their earnings record;
• Change their address and phone number;
• Start or change direct deposit of their benefit payment; and now
• Get a replacement SSA-1099 or SSA-1042S.

We hope that you find this information helpful, and we encourage you to share it with your members and colleagues.

I think this is a wonderful addition to the services available via the SSA website, and look forward to seeing more features added. This feature alone has the potential to help cut down on some of the extra calls that the SSA receives, as well as to reduce the time required for a beneficiary to receive the necessary forms to complete their tax returns. Win-win, in my book!

*This is a departure, but Form SSA-1099 is the bane of tax preparers everywhere, due to its non-standard size (difficult to scan into a computer properly), the difficulty in trimming off the edges and (at least for me) the gummy substance that is used to hold the thing together. This gum, if not removed, will jam up a scanner’s rollers and make it nearly unusable. If I’m suggesting changes, I’d love to see this form updated to a standard size (8.5×11 or 8.5×14) and sans gum.