From WFLA:
A Florida woman has been stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare for years since the death of her husband, when the Social Security Administration informed her that she, too, was dead. …
While SSA eventually corrected the error, Mercer’s troubles persisted with other government agencies.
After getting pulled over for speeding, Mercer learned the Department of Motor Vehicles also believed she was dead, with her license showing the officer a “deceased” error. SSA then had to inform the agency that Mercer is still alive.
But her troubles didn’t end there; the Internal Revenue Service also believes she’s dead. First Coast News reported that she hasn’t been able to file her taxes in six years because of the ongoing issue. …
I have to guess that Social Security didn’t properly resurrect this poor woman and has never corrected the mistake but I don’t know the ins and outs of the Death Master File. Can anyone guess what has happened?
8 comments:
Many knowledgeable SSA employees left the agency in a hurry due to DOGE and the replacements were not given proper training.
Way too many possibilities to speculate. The article is very thin.
The agency has too many tasks for the number of employees currently left to handle. Someone miskeyed something and didn't triple check. Employees no longer have adequate time to ensure they are accurate. They have tremendous pressure handle workloads that are twice as large as what might be expected years ago. SSA is "killing people" thousands of times per week. This was a mistake with a large, terrible consequence but mistakes are much more likely to happen when there are not enough employees to adequately complete the work.
Can confirm
Our Regional Office had a cadre that oversaw erroneous death cases, and they did not let a single thing slip past them. If you got a case, you made sure to dot every i and cross every t because they would find your mistakes, and it was embarrassing. They wanted a report the day you got the case, and they wanted to be updated on any continuing actions (like coordinating with the claimant's bank).
That was until the Fork In The Road. That cadre no longer exists. Field Office workers now have no oversight on erroneous death cases beyond local FO management, and the quality of that varies greatly. I'd suspect other regions are in the same boat, and that'd explain a lot of cases like these. They may not have any CSRs left that really know how to handle these cases.
SSA shares DMF files with Treasury very regularly so if she is resurrected (which she'd know if she's getting Social Security benefits and Medicare) it sounds like an IRS problem about the taxes. Or did she file a return indicating taxpayer deceased at some point? I hope she has a member of Congress with a good constituent service staff, or a tax clinic at a local law school, who can help her untangle things.
Blaming this situation on the current administration and staffing exodus, awful as it is, ignores the part where this issue has spanned over 6 years. Mistakes happen, and I know this is difficult to correct.
Yeah, if she was killed off in error and resurrected 6 -5 years ago, that was 2020? That RO staff specializing in resurrections seems to have missed this one. Fixing it today is an issue, but 6 years of IRS thinking she is dead isn't a today problem, it's a today thing to fix but the cause and blame lies much earlier.
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