BetterInvesting / ICLUBcentral has no policy with respect to Social Security numbers. The IRS and every state requires that a Social Security Number (SSN) or Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) must be provided by every partner in a partnership. These must be included on every federal and state tax return for every partner in a partnership. As a result, if you wish to use the myICLUB club tax printer to generate a complete tax return that can be mailed to the IRS and to your state, every member’s SSN must, if not saved in the member’s profile in the club’s myICLUB.com account then must be entered in the Club Tax Printer on myICLUB.com. Social Security Numbers as well as all other club data is stored with encryption that exceeds industry standards and is backed up in that condition on ICLUBcentral servers for data protection purposes in a secure off-site data center.
If Social Security Numbers are not in a member’s myICLUB.com profile, when generating the club tax returns the treasurer has the ability to type in the Social Security Numbers in order to complete the return and print or e-File it. Those numbers are saved in the tax forms in the encrypted myICLUB databases but are not available in the myICLUB member profile.
Social Security Numbers in the myICLUB.com member profile or that are saved tax forms in a club’s myICLUB website are only accessible to treasurers and members with administrator privileges. Members without those privileges cannot see other members’ SSNs in any fashion.
If a club chooses to not require members to provide SSNs in their myICLUB Member Profile, and the treasurer then does not enter by hand the SSNs when preparing the club’s required tax forms, then the treasurer does have the option of printing the IRS tax return and the returns for some (but not all) states, writing in the SSNs where required on all required forms and schedules, and then printing the returns. Note that this can possibly require printing 400 or more pages of forms and schedules to be mailed for a single club IRS return, plus state returns, and plus file copies of all submissions, so there is significant work involved in hand-entering SSNs on tax filings.
HOWEVER, an increasing number of states are only allowing e-Filing and no longer accept printed, mailed tax returns. In these cases it is impossible to not provide tax identification numbers to an online service at some point in the tax preparation process.
Finally, if a partner does not provide a SSN to a partnership, the IRS levies a $290 penalty (for 2022) per partner for incorrect or incomplete Schedule K-1s submitted with the partnership’s returns. As a result, partnerships must know and store the SSNs of all partners. In order for us to help clubs comply with IRS requirements, at some point along the way. It is simply impossible for most clubs to keep members’ SSNs offline; for those may be able to keep member SSN’s offline, there will be a significant cost in time, resources, and money to satisfy that demand. The stark reality is that any individual’s Social Security Number is more likely than not already available in some dark corner of the Internet.
