Dec 19, 2006

Staff Instructions On Attorney Registration

Social Security has issued staff instructions in its Program Operations Manual Series (POMS) on the new system by which attorneys and others representing claimants must register with Social Security and must submit a new form 1695 for each claimant they represent. This is being done so that Social Security can start providing 1099 forms to the attorneys and other representatives.

The crucial question of whether the attorney or other representative must include the name and Social Security number of all of their clients' dependents who may obtain benefits on the account of their clients, as suggested by the form itself, is not answered in the instructions. Trying to obtain this information would be a big burden for attorneys representing Social Security claimants. Doing the data entry for all these names and Social Security numbers would be a big administrative burden for Social Security. There seems to be no crying need for obtaining and entering this information and a huge potential for error, yet Social Security has been unable so far to say that they really need the data or why they need it.

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