‘Resurrected,’ but still wallowing in red tape

For a dead woman, Laura Todd is awfully articulate.

“I don’t think people realize how difficult it is to be dead when you’re not,” said Todd, who is very much alive and kicking in Nashville, Tenn., even though the federal government has said otherwise for many years.

Todd’s struggle started eight years ago with a typo in government records. The government has reassured her numerous times that it has cleared up the confusion, but the problems keep coming.   

Most recently, the IRS — again — rejected her electronic tax return.

“I will not be eligible for my refund. I’m not eligible for my rebate,” she said. “I mean, I can’t do anything with it.”

Laura Todd is not alone. She is one of tens of thousands of living, breathing Americans whom the federal government has wrongly declared dead — by one measure, more than 35 a day.

Garbage in, garbage out
The problem begins at the Social Security Administration, keeper of most of the records tabulating deaths in the United States. Like other government agencies, the IRS, with whom Todd has most recently tangled, relies upon Social Security’s database, said Dan Boone, a spokesman for the IRS.

When Social Security determines that an eligible current or future beneficiary has died, it closes the person’s entry in its Case Processing and Management System, or CPMS.

The system is only as good as the data it receives. Sometimes, that isn’t very good.

Todd, for example, was killed when someone in Florida died and her Social Security number was accidentally typed in. Since then, her tax returns have repeatedly been rejected, and her bank closed her credit card account.

“One time when I [was] ruled dead, they canceled my health insurance because it got that far,” she said.

Toni Anderson of Muncie, Ind., expired when someone in the government pushed the wrong button, making the records declare that it was she, not her husband, John, who died Nov. 8.

Social Security even sent this letter: “Dear Mr. Anderson, our condolences on the loss of Mrs. Anderson.”

A hard problem to fix
Social Security concedes there’s a problem.

“The accuracy of death information is critical to SSA and its beneficiaries, as well as other federal, state and local government agencies,” it said in a 2006 report. “Input of an erroneous death entry can lead to benefit termination and result in financial hardship for a beneficiary.”

Are you dead? Most people discover the government thinks they’re dead when they try to file their taxes or when the IRS notifies Social Security that thay have died. If you experience a recurring federal tax problem or find that going through normal IRS channels doesn’t resolve the problem, call the Taxpayer Advocate Service at 1-877-777-4778.

Anderson, 64, lost her monthly Social Security disability check. She hasn’t been able to make house payments and faces foreclosure. Her Medicaid benefits were also suspended, creating a crushing burden as she battles breast and possibly bone cancer.

“They’ve seen me four times, so they know that I’m alive,” Anderson said. “It’s just a matter of being able to get me alive in the system.”

That isn’t as easy as showing up at the Social Security office and saying, “Hi.”

Social Security says an erroneous death record can be removed only when it is presented with proof that the original record was entered in error. The original error must be documented, and the deletion must be approved by a supervisor after “pertinent facts supporting reinstatement” are available in the system.

In several audits, Social Security’s inspector general found that while documentation was required to delete a death record — “resurrecting” it, in Social Security’s language — people could be recorded as dead with much less paperwork.

For one thing, the agency said it “found that deaths were not always verified before SSI payments were stopped.”

For another, “we found it was not necessary to enter a date of death in CPMS to close a case based on death,” it said. “This created the potential for open cases to be improperly classified as processed due to death in CPMS.”

Moreover, until recently, too many people had open access to death records, which are supposed to be protected by “top secret” restrictions.

That door has since been closed, but the inspector general said the government can’t ensure the accuracy of records before mid-2006.

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