Social Security Numbers

Crash

Some of our employees adamantly oppose the use of their social security numbers for any reason other than payroll and tax reporting. For example, we recently changed medical insurance carriers. They refused to give their social security numbers for ID purposes and insisted that we get dummy numbers for them. It seems that SSNs are always requested as an integral item for employee records, whether it's by outside services such as third party administrators or for innumerable legitimate business reporting requirements. At what point do we have to be concerned about arbitrarily providing SSN information?

Theresa Gegen TX

Social Security numbers are protected by federal law. I checked the social security website and found a fact sheet (your Number and Card), which gives some information about privacy. You may want to check it out (and may find other important information there). Simply search for "social security administration" to find their website. Note that the I9 and W4 forms you use both have a Privacy Act Notice. However, none of these will clearly answer your question, if you take a bit of time to search the social security site, you may find a better answer. Remember that these employees probably have a good reason to want to keep their number confidential (social security number are one of the ways crooks will duplicate an identity). So you would probably be bette off limiting their use to payroll purposes.
Good luck! Theresa

HR IN MONTGOMERY

OUR MEDICAL COMPANY ALSO REQUIRES SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS AND I UNDERSTAND THAT EMPLOYEES CAN REFUSE TO GIVE IT FOR ANYTHING OTHER THAN PAYROLL PURPOSES BUT OUR MEDICAL CARRIER SAYS NO SSN, NO COVERAGE. IF YOUR EMPLOYEES ARE SMART, THEY WILL GIVE IT !!!HOPE THIS HELPS.

Sue

Our insurance company, United Healthcare, will allow employees to use a different number upon request. The only catch is, when calling customer service, the employee needs to remember this other number.

Gar

At the place of my previous employment, we were required to provide our SS No. to our medical carrier. No number, no coverage. Well, one of our employees provided her number and later learned her identity had been duplicated or stolen and that the culprit obtained her SS No. via the carrier. She's suing the carrier.