What happens to 4506C and SSN Verifications if the Government Shuts Down?

According to KPMG, the IRS will remain fully operational during a potential government shutdown that may occur at 12:01AM Wednesday. That’s a change from past shutdowns when tax transcript services were unavailable. The Social Security Administration’s lapse plan, however, shows that certain services will pause, including the Consent Based Social Security Number Verification (CBSV) program that lenders rely on for SSN checks.

Separately, SSA’s CBSV service is already in a maintenance outage through October 4th, as posted on the Informative Research status page. This means that SSN verification requests through IR are currently delayed even before the potential shutdown.

Key Points:

• The IRS will remain fully operational during a shutdown, so income verification and tax transcript requests should continue without disruption
• SSA’s lapse plan indicates CBSV and other non-critical services will be paused during a shutdown
• CBSV is already in a maintenance outage, which is currently delaying SSN verifications through IR

Our Take:

Informative Research expects IRS income verification to remain steady, but SSN verification is already affected by SSA’s CBSV maintenance outage and will pause fully if a shutdown occurs. All SSN verification orders will be queued and processed on a first-in, first-out basis once CBSV is restored and SSA services resume.