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The SSA 1099 Sm statement tells you how much you received in Social Security benefits during the previous year and provides a worksheet to determine if any of your benefits are taxable.

Several versions of Form 1099 are used, depending on the nature of the income transaction:

A commercial contractor prints and mails Form SSA-1099-SM. Payment Update Total Tax Year (PUTTY) is a subsystem that generates the Computation data of benefits paid to domestic and foreign Title II beneficiaries for their End of Year Tax Statements. The PUTTY system reads the payment history data from the MBR and PHUS to create end of year benefit tax statements. PUTTY provides this information on magnetic tapes that are then used by a contractor/vendor to prepare these benefit statements. Tapes include information for all Title II beneficiaries who receive or repay benefits during the previous calendar year (closed tax year) excluding those records with End of Year Benefit Tax Statement alerts.

Sometimes some of your SSA benefits may be taxable. It depends on your base amount. Generally, if Social Security benefits were your only income for 2010, your benefits are not taxable and you probably do not need to file a federal Income Tax return.

You can do the following quick computation to determine whether some of your benefits may be taxable:
• First, add one-half of the total Social Security benefits you received to all your other income, including any tax exempt interest and other exclusions from income.
• Then, compare this total to the base amount for your filing status. If the total is more than your base amount, some of your benefits may be taxable.

The 2010 base amounts are:
• $32,000 for married couples filing jointly.
• $25,000 for single, head of household, qualifying widow/widower with a dependent child, or married individuals filing separately who did not live with their spouses at any time during the year.
• $0 for married persons filing separately who lived together during the year.

The SSA- 1099 is the same as a 1099 Sm the SM just stands for Statement.

You are not to include SSI payments but SSA are included to calculate if any are taxable. Yes, TurboTax will calculate the taxable portion for you.

If your wife recieved the SSA 1099 Sm form you need to use here total benefit amoutn when calculating for tax.