Strange, if true

Wikipedia claims that

There is no legal requirement for individuals to join the Social Security program. The Social Security Act does not require a person to have a Social Security Number (SSN) to live and work in the United States.[22] Any "duty" to apply for and obtain a Social Security number can be summarised in this way: you get it if you need it or request it. There is no legal compulsion to do so. However, once joined there is no general provision for individuals to opt out of or quit the program.

My reading of the citations is that you don't have to join the program . . . but you still gotta pay the tax, so it's a distinction without a difference. Do any readers have thoughts?

Comments

Since 1995 or so you can't claim a child as a dependent without a SS number. Which means, no, YOU don't need it but your parents sure do!

Posted by Todd Fletcher | October 10, 2007 7:00 PM

The Social Security Act may not require you to obtain a social security number, but Section 6109 of the Internal Revenue Code and the applicable regulations require you to include your social security number on your tax return. Section 6012 of the Internal Revenue Code requires every person with income over the exemption amount to file a tax return. So while it may be true you are not required to have a social security number to live or work in the United States, you are required to have one if you work for more than a very modest amount of money.

A generation or two ago, it was certainly common to meet married women who didn't have a social security number (I don't think my grandmother did). The new rule on dependent exemptions, plus the diminishing number of women who never work outside the home in their entire lives, have ended that phenomenon, I think.

Posted by y81 | October 10, 2007 7:33 PM

Certain groups have been able to opt out of both the program and the tax: for example, I don't believe cops in NJ participate, and instead have their own more lucrative system. Railroad workers of course have their own retirement system in lieu of Social Security as well.

Posted by Fred | October 10, 2007 8:47 PM

"They note that in an address to Congress on January 17, 1935, President Roosevelt foresaw the need to move beyond the pay-as-you-go financing of the current Social Security system. "For perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions," the president allowed. But after that, he explained, it would be necessary to move to what he called "voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age." In other words, his call for the establishment of Social Security directly anticipated today's reform agenda: "It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans," FDR explained."

http://www.economicswithaface.com/weblog/archives/2005/02/fdr_and_social.html

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | October 10, 2007 9:16 PM

(NOTE: If you want to read a Social Security document which states that "Getting a Social Security number for your baby is strictly voluntary," click here. Also, please read the SSA letter to Scott McDonald which states that a citizen within the States is not required to get a SSN.)
The purported duty to apply for and obtain a Social Security number therefore boils down to this: you get it if you need it or request it. There is no legal compulsion to do so.

With the act of applying for and obtaining a SSN being entirely voluntary, the next question to be asked is whether any State can force you to use this number which is voluntary in the first place. This appears to have been addressed by § 7 of the Privacy Act of 1974, 88 Stat. 1896, which reads as follows:

"Sec. 7. (a)(1) It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny to any individual any right, benefit, or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his social security account number.

"(2) the provisions of paragraph (1) of this subsection shall not apply with respect to--
(A) any disclosure which is required by Federal statute, or
(B) the disclosure of a social security number to any Federal, State or local agency maintaining a system of records in existence and operating before January 1, 1975, if such disclosure was required under statute or regulation adopted prior to such date to verify the identity of an individual.
(b) Any Federal, State, or local government agency which requests an individual to disclose his social security account number shall inform that individual whether that disclosure is mandatory or voluntary, by what statutory or other authority such number is solicited, and what uses will be made of it."

more of an explaination:
http://fly.hiwaay.net/%7Ebecraft/ssn.html

Must my child have a Social Security number?
No. Getting a Social Security number for your newborn is voluntary.
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10023.html

letter referred to above:
http://fly.hiwaay.net/%7Ebecraft/ScottSSNLetter.pdf

Posted by MEH | October 10, 2007 9:55 PM

I am not sure I even know how to hire and pay someone who does not have a social security number. For simplicity, given how many temporary people we hire, no SS#, no job. I am a rabid anarcho-capitalist, but I am also risk averse vis a vis jail. Particularly now in Arizona with threats of incarceration for employers who hire illegal aliens.

Posted by coyote | October 10, 2007 10:15 PM

A generation or two ago, it was certainly common to meet married women who didn't have a social security number (I don't think my grandmother did).

My grandmother on my father's side (b. in Italy ~1895, came to America ~1915, d. 1974) did not collect Social Security or Medicare, and as far as I know did not have a SSN. Her husband was self-employed as a barber and died in the late 1940's or early 1950's, before self-employed people were required to participate in the system. She never worked herself. Fortunately, my grandmother had nine children, who were able to combine their funds to support her.

Posted by Peter | October 10, 2007 10:26 PM

er, well... to get a job you must prove your employment eligibility, using form I-9
Employment Eligibility

The forms required to prove your eligibility almost all require an SSN to get... potentialy you could probably do without, maybe. I'd haven't looked at all of them yet

Posted by D | October 10, 2007 11:08 PM

Do the Amish have Social Security numbers?

Posted by Tom T. | October 10, 2007 11:29 PM

The post by Mark E. Hoffer quotes a misinterpretation of FDR's words that was advanced a couple years ago by Social Security privatization advocates who wanted to convince people that FDR intended compulsory contributions to be replaced by voluntary retirement plans. That is not what FDR said. Rather, he said that a system of compulsory contributions would be self-sustaining for future generations, and that workers should also have a vehicle for bolstering their retirement incomes by making voluntary contributions. The voluntary system was to stand alongside, not replace, the compulsory system.

Social Security has never included a voluntary component, but these days we have IRAs and other retirement accounts that embody the voluntary part of FDR's vision.

Posted by Whick | October 11, 2007 12:52 AM

The upshot of the voluntary nature of Social Security is classically American. We have placated the radical individualist anti-New Dealers by technically not requiring that one get a SS#, even though as a practical matter, the IRS, private employers, banks and every other institution have combined to ensure that you have to get a SS# to pursue one's life as a normal modern citizen. The only real effect of the supposedly "voluntary" nature of the program is to create the mild pain in the ass of needing to apply, separately, for a SS# when your kid is born, and then wait for it to arrive before one can apply for a passport for that kid, instead of just receiving a number automatically with the birth certificate or combining it all into one national-ID registration process.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 11, 2007 5:21 AM

Not only that, the Federal Income Tax is voluntary as well. Just don't use Zip Codes or the USPS state abbreviations.

The real 13th Amendment prohibits lawyers from serving in Congress, but it's been excised from all the history books.

The Chinese Red Army is training in northern Mexico , they'll be using the Trans-Texas Corridor as part of their UN backed invasion. Once complete the US will join Canada and Mexico in a North American superstate.

Gold fringe on the flag means it's an admiralty court and we're living under martial law.

Oh, and Ohio is not a state.

Posted by James B. | October 11, 2007 6:24 AM

Yeah, this "choice" is illusory. It's like my mother's job at a public school: you don't have to join the union, but the dues will come out of your paycheck either way.

Posted by Silent Cal | October 11, 2007 8:39 AM

"Update: I'm getting some complaints that I'm posting Republican propoganda with this selective quote. I'll have more to say but here is a reply to the above by Al Franken and here is the unedited quote from FDR:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

from the link above:
http://www.economicswithaface.com/weblog/archives/2005/02/fdr_and_social.html

Posted by Mark E Hoffer | October 11, 2007 8:47 AM

"But, most important of all, Social Security changed our culture in ways the authors of the original Social Security Act may or may not have realized: It would, among other things, also discourage savings, expand the state's reach into the family, redistribute income in ways no one imagined (quite often from the working poor and the lower middle-class to the upper middle-class because the latter group tended to have more political clout as exercised through organizations such as the AARP) and create a huge unprecedented peacetime bureaucracy, a bureaucracy that frequently pushed for more expansion under the guise of serving the people.7

The program also had a much more profound effect on American life: It invented the concept of a passive retirement in which individuals would stop working, stop making more then a few dollars a year, or what a Social Security advocate called "pin money8. To make more than pin money would mean Social Security penalties, an idea added to the original bill by the labor unions.

Social Security advocates implicitly convinced tens of millions of Americans that their golden years meant "taking it easy," withdrawing from the most challenging parts of their lives. That would free up millions of jobs, an important consideration in the midst of the Great Depression, an economic calamity in which FDR's policies failed even after six years of huge spending.9 By 1940, an FDR historian would implicitly concede that the New Deal had failed to restore a strong economy. "The America over which Roosevelt presided in 1940 was in its eleventh year of depression. No decline in American history had been so deep, so lasting, so far reaching."10 Clearly, America's recovery from the Great Depression did not begin until the buildup for World War II and the war itself. That's when FDR discovered his affinity for a military Keynesianism.11

In a series of articles this year, LewRockwell.com looks at the many changes triggered by Social Security. The changes triggered debates over basic social and economic issues such as personal responsibility vs. the general welfare, and who defines the nature of retirement, the individual or the government, as well as who should control the retirement assets of millions of people.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/bresiger/bresiger6.html

Posted by MEH | October 11, 2007 9:04 AM

Used to be some Native Americans did not have SSN's--payments made on their behalf through the Bureau of Indian Affairs were under a BIA-assigned number. Essentially, if you're self-employed and don't earn enough to have to file a tax return--i.e., living off the grid, then no SSN. Things may have changed since I worked in the bureaucracy.

Posted by Bill Harshaw | October 11, 2007 9:29 AM

In regards to whomever made the comment about New Jersey Police; yes, the police departments, at least in the cities and towns in the north east of the state where I grew up and knew many cops growing up, had its own benefits (i.e. non-federal). The departments negotiated for higher salaries with the state legislators, and they then in turn used the extra salary money for these benefits within the unions. So technically, they are coming from state taxes, but that is really only factored as an increase in what is already a public utility tax, and in the end, that increase is negligible.

I should point out that the origin of these salary increases is something of an elephant in the room as far as the north Jersey area around Manhattan (Bergen/Hudson/Essex/Union counties) is concerned. As hailing from that part of the state, and having at times an intimate relationship with certain parts of its municipal infrastructure, I came to realize that while being pretty conservative, the area remains trapped in a Tammany-style Democratic machine government. Rather than the Debbsian painting of the noble socialist working man, the men I worked with on the loading docks and saw on the police payroll were most concerned with which politician was going to put the most money in his pockets, and keep the unions off his back - even if that meant making deals with them. Ironically, it was self interest which kept the north Jersey Democrats in power and that made them strange bedfellows of the private interests that operate as though the tri-state area was still non-annexed territory.

It is the recent effort of the police departments, after coming under attack by the justice department in the last thirty years for taking graft from organized crime, to sever, or at least cleanse these ties by asking for more state money, relinquishing the need, or at least the suspicion that they might be finding it at institutions of ill-repute.

P.S. Senator Bob Menendez is a child of the North Jersey Tammany machine, with a long resume of disasters like his county's public schools, and just an all around liberal douchebag.

Posted by Peter | October 11, 2007 4:05 PM

Here's a possible scenario. Imagine a child is born to a rich couple who leave him a mansion filled with cash vaults. He never has to work hence never has to pay SSI taxes hence he never has to file income tax as he earns no income (I'm assuming the cash is not invested hence he is just living off wealth, never producing).

A slightly related scenario is if you make a living without actually working. This is probably a bit more common than the first situation. For example, if you inherit lots of rental property or a stock portfolio your 'work' might simply be as a 'pure capitalist'. You would still probably need a 'taxpayer id number' to file income taxes but you technically would never be part of the Social Security system.

Posted by Boonton | October 14, 2007 9:07 PM

You do NOT have to show your SS card on your I-9 is you have a passport. It's either a passport OR drivers license and SS. I never show mine. To anybody period. Perfectly legal.

Posted by gylot | March 19, 2008 11:47 PM

* Form 16 is a certificate issued by the employer at the end of the year and provided to the employee. This certificate provides details of the salary income of the employee and the TDS deducted from the employee's income.
* Form 16 is all you need to file ITR if you have reported all your income to your employer.
* It is your right to obtain F16 from the employer within 15 days time after the end of the financial year.
* Obtain your Form 16 early, so that you can file your return early. The earlier you file, the faster you will get refund.
* Your chance of scrutiny reduces by filing early.
* Ensure that you have F16s from all the employers that you have worked for during the year.
taxspanner.com

Posted by Tax Spanner | April 21, 2008 6:14 AM

Many people, myself included, have deep personal objections to the way the SSN has morphed from a simple voluntary retirement safety net system into a mandatory national identification system.

Several federal agencies require citizens to obtain a SSN even if they object. Failing to obtain a SSN can result in imprisonment and fines if one attempts to live a normal, mainstream lifestyle.

My son remained unnamed until after we had him safely out of the hospital in order to avoid the "enumeration at birth" (EAB). The EAB program is being foisted upon parents, again, even over their objections, by hospital workers. Newborn infants are being assigned SSNs.

Why is it so important for our public servants, our supposedly elected officials, to brand us with identifying tags at birth?! And now people are being induced to have their SSNs implanted - you guessed it - into their right arms and/or foreheads. Despite the fact that such implants have been proven to cause cancer.

The more the SSN infringes on our freedoms; the more it' pushed upon innocent newborn babies; the more our supposedly subservient government forces us to submit to this over our objections, the more it looks and feels evil to me, and the more actively I object to and resist it.

Posted by SSN Conscientious Objector | June 12, 2008 2:08 AM