I wanted to provide an update on various issues that I’m working on with SSA to advance NOSSCR’s policy priorities and improve your ability to represent claimants:

Revisions to NOSSCR’s Hearing Format Election Statement

NOSSCR recently revised our Hearing Format Election Statement based on feedback from OHO, which issued reminders to schedulers nationwide that representatives are permitted to use NOSSCR’s form and that use of SSA’s forms is not required. If you are encountering issues at your local hearing offices when attempting to use our form, please contact me directly so we can report them to OHO, which has been very responsive to these problems and quick to address them.

Erroneous 1099 Issues

The IRS requires SSA to issue a Form 1099-MISC to each representative who is affiliated with a registered firm or business entity and receives aggregate fees of $600 or more in a calendar year, with the total fee payments reflected in box 10 (Gross proceeds paid to an attorney), which the IRS does not consider personal or taxable income to the individual representative. Representatives who work as sole proprietors, or who work for business entities who are not registered with SSA, receive a Form 1099-NEC, with income reported in box 1 (Nonemployee compensation), which is considered taxable income. As you know, SSA frequently misreports fees paid to representatives, resulting in the issuance of 1099-NEC forms to salaried associates who have no right to or interest in the fees paid in their names. Because of SSA’s failure to correct these reporting errors, representatives have been forced to find workarounds with their accountants in order to report their income correctly when filing their personal taxes. 

After working closely with SSA over the past few years, the agency finally has a way to correct erroneous 1099 issues for representatives. I have sent a few test cases to my fee contact at SSA for training purposes and will report back with detailed instructions on how to request correction and from who/which office once I have more information.

Health IT (HIT) at OHO

SSA’s HIT initiative is an electronic records transmission program that allows SSA to request and obtain medical records from participating providers instantaneously at no cost to the claimant or representative. While only agency staff can currently utilize HIT directly, NOSSCR is working on getting HIT expanded to representatives and ensuring that HIT is utilized whenever possible to obtain records, which saves times, reduces costs to claimants and representatives, and ensures the record is complete. For these reasons, this is a top priority for NOSSCR.

As a direct result of our efforts, we’ve convinced OHO to add a functionality so that HIT requests are automated at the hearing level (i.e. when a request for hearing is filed, HIT requests are made automatically like they are at the DDS level). This automated HIT trigger was implemented in February 2023 for every new case received at OHO. We have also confirmed with SSA and OHO leadership that OHO staff should be making updated HIT requests during case workup in all cases, regardless of whether the claimant is represented or unrepresented, and that the automated HIT trigger does not preclude use of the manner trigger to generate subsequent HIT requests. 

We hope this will ensure HIT is being utilized more consistently while we continue to advocate for the expansion of HIT to the representative community.