The Nation - News from July 13, 1988

The Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration agreed on a plan to resolve disparities in the two agencies’ records that could be depriving more than 10 million workers of some Social Security benefits. The Social Security Administration will investigate about 5.4 million disparities in employers’ wage reports dating from 1978 to 1986, and the two agencies will divide responsibility for 1 million discrepancies that have arisen since then. Differences began appearing in the two agencies’ records in 1978, when Social Security and the IRS began receiving separate statements from employers on how much each worker earned. The IRS calculation of total workers’ earnings exceeds the Social Security figure by nearly $60 billion.