The Earnings Modernization (EM) release 3.2 involves processing Forms W-2c submitted by an employer to correct earnings information reported for employees. Prior to March 1993, whenever the Social Security Administration (SSA) received Forms W-2c, the correction posted to the Master Earnings File (MEF) without review and was sometimes questionable.

Occasionally, this results in an incorrect posting or an erroneous offset to the previous reported earnings. SSA would not become aware of the need for a corrective action until the employer or employee contacted SSA with notification of intent.

The Division of Earnings and Business Services (DEBS) technicians, in the Office of Central Operations (OCO), investigate alerts generated by EM 3.2 to ensure posting accuracy.

The EM 3.2 release allows the system to compare electronically the W-2c earnings information to the MEF posted earnings and then determine whether the action should alert for a manual investigation. The alerts generate seven different codes based on certain criteria. Systems send these alerts to OCO for a manual review of the earnings record to determine that the posting agrees with the employer’s intent.