ugh my stupid W-2s
Jun. 13th, 2020 01:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dragonlady7via https://ift.tt/2B0dWGC
So I have the issue that somehow, at some point, the payroll company my employer uses got an incorrect social security number for me. I first noticed it several years back, when filing my taxes– the W-2 had a number on it one digit off from my real SSN, and so I asked my employer to correct it, and then the next year it was still wrong, and I asked them to correct it, and this happened at least three years in a row, maybe four, and it was just one of those things and i didn’t think much about it.
Until, of course, I got furloughed along with the rest of America, and went to get on unemployment, and the Dep’t of Labor was like… You can’t get unemployment if you haven’t worked in the last 18 months. And I was like… ??? I’ve been working at the same place for 11 years??
Oh. They go by SSN, as does basically every thing ever. And like… I don’t know how Social Security actually works, but if the Social Security Whatsit bureau thinks i haven’t had any wages for eleven years now, then am I eligible for social security when I retire? I’ve been paying into the system at every paycheck.
ARGH
Anyway I’ve been trying to straighten this out since March 20th, and I’ve sent them photocopies of everything, and they sent me a letter that was like “u have never worked” and I sent them back a thing that was like “yes I have here’s all my proof” and i haven’t heard back from that but I figure it was eight weeks to get the first letter and I’d expect like, eight more for the second, but in the meantime…
well, BIL just now called his stepmom who works for Illinois’s Dep’t of Labor, and she was like “ah we have that kind of thing all the time, it takes a while to straighten out but we’d pay the minimum benefit up until then at least.”
I was like…. is the minimum benefit zero because that’s what I’ve been getting.
Oh, apparently not, so that’s a bummer. Who knows!
She suggested I go to an SSA office in person, which, great, but probably they’re open so I can, so. I should do that, there is one in Troy. But here’s a fun lil wrinkle, I don’t know where my social security card is; my parents had it my whole childhood and I don’t actually know if they ever gave it to me, and if they did, the matter of where I’d’ve put it when I moved out of their house some twenty-five years ago and have moved like eight times since then is a complex one.
I mean, I also own a passport, but do I have that with me? No, I am 300 miles from my house and haven’t been home in over two weeks, but I wasn’t planning on crossing international borders so all I’ve got on me is my driver’s license.
But I don’t know what to do, and my employer is definitely a big fat pile of No Help Whatsoever in this one. (He was like “payroll company says it’s $50 to send a new W-2, let me know how many of those you want?” and I’m like… is he expecting… me to have fifty dollars… when I have not been paid since March… and if they fix my W-2 does that fix anything at all in my problems? I don’t think it does?)
I went to the SSA website and they were like “create an online account” so I went through the thing and they asked me some astonishingly personal questions (”you had a credit card in 2017, who was the provider” answer: no, “you had an auto loan in 2019, who was the provider?” “… choice C, how did you know that.” “Your middle or former name begins with S, which of these choices is it?” “two were gibberish and one was weird and one was… my actual middle name, interesting.”) and then the page reloaded to the homepage, and I was like… did… that work? So I went to log in and it was like NO ACCOUNT FOUND and then I was like ah no I see, finish creating account, great, and clicked on that and it was like “Enter the verification code we sent you!”
… I was not sent a verification code, on any of the contact methods I provided when I signed up, unless it’s coming by the fucking postal service??
So that was no help.
BIL said he was impressed that I don’t seem to have screamed MOTHERFUCKER at any point during all this, and in fact I have not, I have only quietly cried myself to sleep because I don’t understand paperwork and hate numbers and can’t keep things like this straight and it’s a perfect storm of The Shit My ADHD Ass Cannot Fucking Handle, but getting good and mad and yelling cuss words is not something I’m restraining myself from doing because that is not at all my impulse, I think I’m just going to cry quietly in the other room later because that is definitely more my speed here.
*sniffle* why are numbers so terrible to me. It’s not even necessarily about the money? I mean, I haven’t spent any money except on gas since March, I don’t really own anything so it sort of doesn’t matter, but I have literally been paying unemployment insurance and social security for over a decade and I want that to matter in some way? Does nothing matter? I would like to not be so fucking broke but I won’t starve, that’s not the issue, I have immense privilege in that I can just sort of drift endlessly through support networks and not cost anything but at some point I’m going to need to buy myself new underwear and I would dearly love to have my own money to do that with.
I just. Don’t know. I’ll try again on Monday. Argh. *piteous mumbling*
Adulting doesn’t get easier as you get older, if any of y’all younger than me were wondering. I’d sort of hope age would bring some wisdom but in the department of dealing with government bureaucracies it has in fact not done that at all.
So I have the issue that somehow, at some point, the payroll company my employer uses got an incorrect social security number for me. I first noticed it several years back, when filing my taxes– the W-2 had a number on it one digit off from my real SSN, and so I asked my employer to correct it, and then the next year it was still wrong, and I asked them to correct it, and this happened at least three years in a row, maybe four, and it was just one of those things and i didn’t think much about it.
Until, of course, I got furloughed along with the rest of America, and went to get on unemployment, and the Dep’t of Labor was like… You can’t get unemployment if you haven’t worked in the last 18 months. And I was like… ??? I’ve been working at the same place for 11 years??
Oh. They go by SSN, as does basically every thing ever. And like… I don’t know how Social Security actually works, but if the Social Security Whatsit bureau thinks i haven’t had any wages for eleven years now, then am I eligible for social security when I retire? I’ve been paying into the system at every paycheck.
ARGH
Anyway I’ve been trying to straighten this out since March 20th, and I’ve sent them photocopies of everything, and they sent me a letter that was like “u have never worked” and I sent them back a thing that was like “yes I have here’s all my proof” and i haven’t heard back from that but I figure it was eight weeks to get the first letter and I’d expect like, eight more for the second, but in the meantime…
well, BIL just now called his stepmom who works for Illinois’s Dep’t of Labor, and she was like “ah we have that kind of thing all the time, it takes a while to straighten out but we’d pay the minimum benefit up until then at least.”
I was like…. is the minimum benefit zero because that’s what I’ve been getting.
Oh, apparently not, so that’s a bummer. Who knows!
She suggested I go to an SSA office in person, which, great, but probably they’re open so I can, so. I should do that, there is one in Troy. But here’s a fun lil wrinkle, I don’t know where my social security card is; my parents had it my whole childhood and I don’t actually know if they ever gave it to me, and if they did, the matter of where I’d’ve put it when I moved out of their house some twenty-five years ago and have moved like eight times since then is a complex one.
I mean, I also own a passport, but do I have that with me? No, I am 300 miles from my house and haven’t been home in over two weeks, but I wasn’t planning on crossing international borders so all I’ve got on me is my driver’s license.
But I don’t know what to do, and my employer is definitely a big fat pile of No Help Whatsoever in this one. (He was like “payroll company says it’s $50 to send a new W-2, let me know how many of those you want?” and I’m like… is he expecting… me to have fifty dollars… when I have not been paid since March… and if they fix my W-2 does that fix anything at all in my problems? I don’t think it does?)
I went to the SSA website and they were like “create an online account” so I went through the thing and they asked me some astonishingly personal questions (”you had a credit card in 2017, who was the provider” answer: no, “you had an auto loan in 2019, who was the provider?” “… choice C, how did you know that.” “Your middle or former name begins with S, which of these choices is it?” “two were gibberish and one was weird and one was… my actual middle name, interesting.”) and then the page reloaded to the homepage, and I was like… did… that work? So I went to log in and it was like NO ACCOUNT FOUND and then I was like ah no I see, finish creating account, great, and clicked on that and it was like “Enter the verification code we sent you!”
… I was not sent a verification code, on any of the contact methods I provided when I signed up, unless it’s coming by the fucking postal service??
So that was no help.
BIL said he was impressed that I don’t seem to have screamed MOTHERFUCKER at any point during all this, and in fact I have not, I have only quietly cried myself to sleep because I don’t understand paperwork and hate numbers and can’t keep things like this straight and it’s a perfect storm of The Shit My ADHD Ass Cannot Fucking Handle, but getting good and mad and yelling cuss words is not something I’m restraining myself from doing because that is not at all my impulse, I think I’m just going to cry quietly in the other room later because that is definitely more my speed here.
*sniffle* why are numbers so terrible to me. It’s not even necessarily about the money? I mean, I haven’t spent any money except on gas since March, I don’t really own anything so it sort of doesn’t matter, but I have literally been paying unemployment insurance and social security for over a decade and I want that to matter in some way? Does nothing matter? I would like to not be so fucking broke but I won’t starve, that’s not the issue, I have immense privilege in that I can just sort of drift endlessly through support networks and not cost anything but at some point I’m going to need to buy myself new underwear and I would dearly love to have my own money to do that with.
I just. Don’t know. I’ll try again on Monday. Argh. *piteous mumbling*
Adulting doesn’t get easier as you get older, if any of y’all younger than me were wondering. I’d sort of hope age would bring some wisdom but in the department of dealing with government bureaucracies it has in fact not done that at all.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-13 01:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-06-13 01:58 am (UTC)I appreciate the solidarity.
no subject
Date: 2020-06-13 08:10 am (UTC)I likewise went through an attempt to create a "my social security" account which led to listening to some truly grim hold music, and the interesting revelation that when you go to create such an account, it checks with Experian that you are a real human person, and that's where those odd personal questions come from -- the credit bureau's database. Except in my case it was just an error because I haven't used credit long enough that I'm not real anymore. But thankfully I'm not trying to get benefits gated behind such an account, just trying to prevent identity theft. (If I'm not real, can my identity be stolen? Is this a superpower??)
You are most certainly not alone in not having your original social security card. I'd be very surprised if 1 in 5 U.S. adults have it.