(a) Coverage under section 218 of the Act. Under section 218 of the Social Security Act (the Act) a State may ask the Commissioner of Social Security to enter into an agreement to extend Federal old-age, survivors, disability and hospital insurance coverage to groups of employees of the State and its political subdivisions. The Commissioner shall enter into such an agreement. State and local government employees, after being covered under an agreement, have the same benefit rights and responsibilities as other employees who are mandatorily covered under the programs. For payments due on wages paid before 1987, the State assumes full financial and reporting responsibility for all groups covered under its agreement. The agreement may not be terminated in its entirety or with respect to any coverage group under that agreement. For payments due on wages paid in the year 1987 and years later, section 9002 of Pub. L. 99-509 amends section 218 of the Act by transferring responsibility for collecting contributions due and receiving wage reports from the Social Security Administration (SSA) to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Sections of the regulations wholly or partly affected by this amendment to the Act are appended with the phrase “—for wages paid prior to 1987.”

(b) Mandatory old-age, survivors, disability, and hospital insurance coverage. Under section 210(a)(7)(F) of the Act, mandatory old-age, survivors, disability, and hospital insurance coverage is extended to certain services performed after July 1, 1991, by individuals who are employees of a State (other than the District of Columbia, Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or American Samoa), a political subdivision of the State, or any wholly owned instrumentality of one or more of the foregoing, and who are not members of the employer's retirement system. Certain services are excluded from such mandatory coverage (see § 404.1020(a)(3).