What if your Social Security taxes had been invested?

You don’t need to do this. This page reads your file inside your browser and never sends it anywhere. If you’d still rather the file didn’t identify you, you can edit a copy of it before you choose it above.

What in the file identifies you

SSA’s statement file has one personal section, <osss:UserInformation>, near the top. It holds just two fields:

• <osss:Name>: your full name.
• <osss:DateOfBirth>: your date of birth, written year-month-day (for example 1970-03-14).

The file does not contain your Social Security number, and it has no address, phone number or email either. ssn.tips never asks for your Social Security number, so don’t type it anywhere on this site.

Everything else in the file is about your record rather than who you are: the date the file was downloaded (<osss:FileCreationDate>), SSA’s benefit estimates (<osss:EstimatedBenefits>), and your earnings for each year with your lifetime tax totals (<osss:EarningsRecord>). Your earnings history is still private financial information, so keep the edited copy somewhere safe too.

How to edit it

1. Make a copy of the XML file you downloaded and edit the copy.
2. Open the copy in a plain text editor, such as TextEdit on a Mac or Notepad on Windows. Don’t use a word processor like Word, which can change the file.
3. Find the <osss:UserInformation> lines near the top.
4. Replace the text between <osss:Name> and </osss:Name> with anything you like, or delete that whole line. Only change the text between the tags, and leave the tags themselves alone unless you delete the entire line.
5. Decide what to do with your date of birth (see below).
6. Save the file as plain text, keeping the .xml ending, then choose the edited copy above.

Before (made-up example):

<osss:UserInformation>
    <osss:Name>JANE Q. EXAMPLE</osss:Name>
    <osss:DateOfBirth>1970-03-14</osss:DateOfBirth>
</osss:UserInformation>

After (name replaced, real birth year kept, month and day changed):

<osss:UserInformation>
    <osss:Name>ANONYMOUS</osss:Name>
    <osss:DateOfBirth>1970-07-01</osss:DateOfBirth>
</osss:UserInformation>

Without a name, your results are headed “Your statement” instead of “Statement for” and your first name. Nothing else uses it.

What the analysis still needs

• Your earnings by year. Leave every <osss:Earnings startYear="…" endYear="…"> entry, with its <osss:FicaEarnings> and <osss:MedicareEarnings> amounts, exactly as it is. These are what your taxes are calculated from. Without them the page can’t run.
• SSA’s benefit estimates in <osss:EstimatedBenefits>. If you remove them, you’ll have to type in a monthly benefit estimate yourself.
• Your date of birth, either in the file or typed into the page.

Your date of birth: three choices

• Leave it as it is. This gives the most accurate results.
• Keep the real year but change the month and day, as in the example above. Results shift a little, because your age will be off by up to six months. Keep the year-month-day format (for example 1970-07-01). A year on its own isn’t read as a date.
• Delete the whole <osss:DateOfBirth> line. The analysis can’t run without a date of birth. It uses it to work out your age today and in each year you worked, your life expectancy from SSA’s life tables (which depend on birth year), and how many more years of tax you’d pay before claiming. So the page won’t show any results at first. Instead it asks for your date of birth under “Your assumptions”. Whatever you type there stays in this browser tab. It isn’t saved and is gone when you close the tab.