SSA Problems in Processing Wage Reports

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed information about wage reporting problems that an employer encountered with the Social Security Administration (SSA). GAO noted that: (1) SSA does not routinely track the types of problems encountered in processing automated wage reports as a way of monitoring whether employers are following reporting requirements or how well its systems are performing; (2) SSA staff found no problems with the computer software and could provide no reason why the information was not initially processed; (3) the employer made no changes to the software, but only reviewed it to determine if the problems SSA identified existed; (4) SSA acknowledged that system problems led to the rejection of an unknown number of employer wage reports; and (5) when the employer attempted to follow up on the status of resubmitted disks, SSA was unable to tell him whether it had received the disks he returned.