Kondor Tax & Accounting · Questions
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Usually, yes. Social Security does not charge for correcting your record, and you can do it yourself. This page explains how, in plain words. It is information, not a service: you do not need to pay anyone, including us.
People who worked and paid Social Security taxes before they had a valid Social Security number, and who have one now. Most often that means you filed tax returns with an ITIN, an individual taxpayer identification number; or you worked under a number that was not valid for work; or you paid self-employment tax as a 1099 contractor on returns filed under an ITIN. Later you received work authorization and a valid number, for example through DACA, a change of status or a green card, and those earlier years are not on your Social Security statement.
It is also about anyone whose record is simply wrong: a year missing after a name change, or an employer who reported wages under a mistyped number. The request is the same; only the proof differs.
Every year, employers send Social Security a copy of each W-2. When the name and number on a W-2 do not match a valid Social Security record, the wages cannot be posted to anyone. They go into a holding file instead, where they wait. The tax was withheld and paid; it just never attached to a person.
Self-employment income works the same way one step removed. The IRS passes it to Social Security by Social Security number, and a return filed under an ITIN has none, so those earnings wait too.
Once you have a valid number, you can ask Social Security to find those earnings and credit them to you. Your future retirement, disability and survivor benefits are worked out from your record, so missing years matter.
Yes, and it is the first thing to check. For Social Security numbers issued in 2004 or later, the law asks that the person has held a number valid for work at some point. If you have a valid work number now, that condition is met, and all your covered earnings can count, including years from before you were authorized. For numbers issued before 2004, all covered earnings count regardless.
Someone who has never held a work-valid number cannot build a benefit from these years, however much tax was paid. If that is your situation, the correction will not help yet.
There is no fee for any of this.
Yes, one, and it matters most for self-employment years. Write to the IRS and tell them your ITIN and your new Social Security number belong to the same person, so your tax records are combined under one number. The letter goes to the IRS in Austin, Texas, with your full name, mailing address, your ITIN, a copy of your Social Security card, and a copy of the ITIN assignment notice if you still have it. You can also do this at a local IRS office. The IRS then retires the ITIN and moves your past returns under the new number.
Until that is done, self-employment earnings from ITIN years cannot reach your Social Security record, because the IRS is where Social Security gets them from.
In roughly the order Social Security prefers it:
If you have none of these, give the employer's name and address, the dates you worked and roughly what you were paid. Social Security will search its holding file and may contact the employer. It is weaker, but it is what the form asks for.
Social Security's ordinary limit is about three years and three months after the end of the year. But it makes exceptions when the correction matches a tax return or wage report it already has, or when earnings were posted to the wrong person, and those exceptions cover most wage years no matter how old.
Self-employment years are stricter. They can usually be added when the return for that year was filed on time, and usually cannot be added after the limit when the return was filed late. A late-filed ITIN return is the most common reason a self-employment year cannot be credited.
No. Social Security and the IRS do all of it without charge, and this page is enough for most people. If a question comes up that this page does not answer, ask us; a short question does not need an engagement and we will answer it without opening a file on you. If you would rather hand the whole thing to someone, that is ordinary paid work and we would quote it in writing first, but nobody needs to.
This is not immigration advice. Questions about status, applications, or anything that might affect them belong with an immigration attorney. Papers that carry a Social Security number or ITIN should never be sent by ordinary email, to us or to anyone.