Misleading Emergency Message

Social Security was supposed to begin issuing 1099s this year to attorneys and others who received direct payment of fees for representing Social Security claimants. However, Social Security sent out a "sensitive" Emergency Message to its staff in February saying that because of "unexpected systems limitations" an "executive decision" had been made to delay issuing the 1099s for one year. The Emergency Message was labeled "not to be shared with the public."

I have heard from enough attorneys that I can say that the Emergency Message was inaccurate and misleading. Social Security did send out a large number of 1099s to attorneys this year, but not all of those who should have received a 1099 got one. I did not get one myself, but many of my colleagues in North Carolina did. The 1099s that were sent out were uniformly erroneous, with the dollar figure for fees received being substantially lower than it should have been.

Do I see some red faces at Social Security? Having a little trouble admitting even to staff how badly this was fouled up? Why can't you just put out an accurate press release on this and be done with it? It's not like we were really eager to get those 1099s anyway! At least Social Security did not put down too much income on the 1099s!