Excess Social Security

[Ned Devine]

Client had two jobs that combined wages had him pay in over $5,000 in excess social security.  The jobs were with the same S & P 500 company, but different Federal ID #s and separate W2s.  IRS deducted from the exact excess SS amount from his refund.  No letter yet.  Any thoughts?

mfh

[rcooley25]

The Government is wrong if the conditions are as you have discribed it.

Sounds to me like you could use a good tax attorney.

[dkh · Accepted solution]

How long since return was efiled and partial refund received?     

If you feel a letter should have been received by now call PPS. 

Well don't call now, wait until after 18th at least.

[Ned Devine]

Return was filed at end of February.  I am being impatient and trying to figure out before arrival of letter.  Refund was just received today.  The difference in refund was discover by client  via "Where's my Refund"

thanks for your response!

mfh

[TaxGuyBill]

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@Ned Devine wrote:

 The jobs were with the same S & P 500 company

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The IRS might be correct, and the employer might have messed up.

Look at "common paymaster" and "successor employer" in the links below.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15a#en_US_2022_publink1000169608

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15#en_US_2023_publink1000202407

[Ned Devine]

Very interesting!  That could be the problem.  I will definitely follow up on this post when I get my hands on the letter.

Thanks for the info!

mfh

[Ned Devine]

i hope it does not come to needing an attorney!  I am praying for just a clerical error or something that can be resolved easily.  I will definitely post outcome. Thanks for your response!

[Ned Devine]

Per IRS PPS, Schedule 3, Line 11 (Excess Social Security) is blank.  However, Line 15 of Schedule 3, the total that goes to the 1040 has the correct amount of the excess social security withheld.  Line 11 is Correct in proseries software.  So somehow in transmission the amount on line 11 was deleted, resulting in the excess ss amount being removed from refund.

Can be easily resolved with a response to letter.  They are calling it a calculation error.

I find this odd.  The amount was over $5,000 because of the timing of his job change.  I wonder if the IRS has an edit to reject this line with an anount over a certain value.

[dkh]

" Line 11 is Correct in proseries software.  So somehow in transmission the amount on line 11 was deleted, resulting in the excess ss amount being removed from refund."

Well that's frightening that numbers can disappear off the tax return before transmitting to IRS .        Would it be easier to file an amendment that includes the line 11 amount???? 

[TaxGuyBill]

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@dkh wrote:

        Would it be easier to file an amendment that includes the line 11 amount???? 

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Unless you paper-file, you wouldn't know if the amendment sent the right numbers or not.  It may just do the same thing.