For reporting to the Social Security Administration (SSA), the employee name must match that on the employee's social security card.
The following are references from the Social Security Administration's web site:
From the information in these sources, the following can be said about SSNs:
A Social Security Number (SSN) is a nine digit number, conventionally grouped in a 3-2-4 pattern, with the groups separated by dashes. This is a structured identifer. To wit: The first digit group identifies the "area" (based on state and/or zip code) of the originating application. The second digit sequence identifies the "group" these are not assigned sequentially. The last four digits comprise the "serial number", and are assigned sequentially within each group.
A string of characters is not a valid SSN if it matches one of the following patterns (this assumes dashes have been stripped):
These additional rules were obtained from 1998 and 1999 Social Security Administration compliance mailings from a payroll company. No official source has been located to verify this information. Official source wanted: please email gregor@focusresearch.com if you have a reference.
Copyright © 2010 Gregor N. Purdy. All rights reserved.