Electronic Wage Reporting Customer Satisfaction: a Good News Case Study

• Activity Number: 529
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 10, 2006 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Government Statistics
• Author(s): Stephen Dienstfrey*+ and Michael Greenberg
• Companies: Schulman, Ronca & Bucuvalas, Inc. and U.S. Social Security Administration
• Keywords: customer satisfaction ; GPRA ; Social Security Administration

Abstract

In January 2003, the Social Security Administration unveiled an online service allowing employers to file the annual wage report of employees electronically. While this service, W-2 Online, is available to all employers with less than 250 employees who are not required to file electronically, it was aimed at the large number of businesses with 20 or fewer employees. Of the 5 million employers with 20 or fewer employees, only 35,000 used W-2 Online in 2004. Further, almost 3 in 5 of the paper W-2 forms were prepared using electronic software. Ten-minute telephone interviews were completed with random samples of paper and web filers. The results pointed out steps SSA could take to increase electronic filing by targeting nonusers of W-2 Online and by partnering with major accounting and tax preparation software developers for automatic filing of W-2 data.