Eighty-one People Are Using Your Social Security Number

Is that a problem? Amazingly, "No", as far as Social Security benefits go. This story was in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times. If 81 people are using your number, it will probably cause problems in other areas of your life (credit reporting comes to mind) but when you retire, no hay problema. It's called "scrambled earnings" and the agency has a lot of experience "unscrambling" them. Basically, you tell them where you worked and disavow earnings elsewhere.

Actually, the answer is "No" for the person who the number is assigned to and "Yes" if anyone else using the SSN ever wants to receive any sort of Social Security benefits (retirement or disability) or any dependents or ex-spouses of that person ever want to collect benefits when that person dies, retires or becomes disabled. A simple answer of why it's a problem: if you can't prove those wages were yours, you don't get credit for them and are therefore not covered by the insurance which Social Security benefits provide.

If you want to look at it one way, those people who are working illegally under that social security number are paying taxes into the "trust funds"* with no expectation of ever collecting any benefits. For those U.S. taxpayers expecting to receive Social Security benefits, that's a good thing because it extends the time before the trust funds are depleted*.

 *There is no money in any of the trust funds. Congress, over the years, took it all and left an iou. You remember Al Gore/Darrell Hammond's "lockbox"?