Since my dad was going to be in the hospital longer than we originally thought, he asked me if I could do his taxes. I had no problem with that as I had been doing Doug and my taxes for years and until recently all of the Heinisch children's as well. While Cal was in Syracuse last weekend, I asked him to take a picture of all of the tax documents that my dad had in his 2024 and 2025 tax folder plus all of the passwords that were relevant in his black notebook. It took some digging and some detective work by my mom but 36 pictures later I had everything I needed . . . almost.
The one item that was missing was the same one that my dad had trouble finding last year, my mom's SSA-1099. At first, I thought, "No problem, I will just set up a social security online account like I had for Doug and I and get it from there." I guess I was naive when I assumed that it would be a ten-minute process. Social Security had changed their online registration steps. A photo of the driver's license wasn't enough, now they needed a selfie from the person's phone as well. I was frustrated but not discouraged when I read that. I knew it would be hard for my mom to do, but with Aunt Vicky's help I thought it would work.
After talking them through the process and several attempts, social security finally accepted the photo of my mom's id and a selfie. I was happy to finally have solved the issue and continued the steps helping her set up the online account. We got to the last question which asked for a phone number to text or call. No problem, we gave them hers and soon got the response, "Sorry, this number is not linked to the registrant." I was floored. The only phone number that they would recognize was the landline that my parents had cancelled at least a decade ago. That was no help.
That was when I decided to call the social security office and explain the issue. The first time was absolutely no help. The second person I talked to was a lot more helpful. She let me merge my mom on to the call and after she verified that I could talk to the social security office on her behalf, they at least let us know the issue. My mom's address was wrong. We gave them every address that we could think of, even mine on Sunset Dr. but know of them worked. That was when we found out that Medicare might be able to give us the information that we needed as the two accounts were linked. After several failed attempts, we finally got into the website on our last try by remembering that my mom's favorite ice cream was butter pecan. We saw the problem right away; her address was listed in Cocoa Florida. I wrote it down and we called the social security office back hoping we could now find a resolution to the issue.
In the end, we were let down once again. My mom was able to give them the fake address, but they started asking her a lot more questions that we weren't prepared for and only confused her with "What's the account number on your savings account? What is your father's name?" My mom didn't have her account number memorized and she didn't know if they meant CrapPa or her biological dad. We gave up. They did give us the numbers for her SSA-1099, but that was it. I realized at that time that the only way to solve the issue was to make an appointment with the Social Security office an hour from her home and take her there myself at the end of March. What a pain. At least I gained knowledge for what to do so this never happens to Doug or I and I can now work on my parents' taxes.
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