Posted on 08/01/2024 3:58:42 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
Senior citizens shouldn’t be paying taxes on their Social Security benefits, former President Donald Trump said Wednesday, floating an idea that could lighten the federal income-tax load for about 40% of recipients.
At the same time, a tax exemption of this magnitude could also speed up the financial woes for Social Security and add a deep bruise to the deficit, according to one analysis.
...
If an individual’s combined income is between $25,000 and $34,000, they’ll pay income taxes on up to half of their benefits. Past the $34,000 mark, up to 85% of the benefits are taxable depending on the amount of combined income.
Combined income is a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income, plus their nontaxable interest and half the amount of their Social Security benefits, according to the Social Security Administration.
For married couples, up to half the benefits are subject to income tax if their combined income is between $32,000 and $44,000. Beyond $44,000, up to 85% of the benefits may be taxable.
Around 40% of Social Security recipients have to pay federal income taxes on the benefits they receive, the Social Security Administration said.
It’s a new twist in Trump’s tax ideas as he runs to get back to the White House. Trump has already called for no income tax on tipped income. The “no tax on tips” idea has won Republican supporters.
The income-tax exemption for Social Security benefits already has some GOP backers. Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, pointed Wednesday to a bill he previously introduced to end the “unjust double tax on Social Security benefits.”
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
A republican president started the tax. A republican president gets rid of the tax. I like it. Go Donald!
If retirees were taxed on earnings and then had to pay that tax into the Social Security Fund, it would be a different matter.
And BTW, though this article doesn't mention it, a retiree will have to pay taxes out of his Social Security if his unearned income exceeds a relatively modest amount (calculation of that amount is on Form 915 and ain't easy to determine). In other words, if you sell a stock with long-term capital gains above the trigger amount and move that money into another stock (with NO CASH coming to you), your SS will be taxed.
Fire a bleepload of bureaucrats.
Problem solved! 😀
There is a joke going around to the effect that: “If we can just print money, then why am I paying taxes?”
$35T debt.
76% of tax revenue goes to pay just the interest on our debt.
And we spend more and more. Money that we just don’t have. But it hasn’t collapsed yet.
I’m no economist, and I can’t picture how it would work, but I suspect that we are going into a new paradigm. I think taxes may become a lot less important. Don’t tax tips. Don’t tax Social Security. Don’t tax estates. The government will just print money and the world will go on.
Of course, that’s “impossible”. And everyone can see that “it would never work”.
But $35T debt seems to work just fine. I guess. Just tax the bejeezus out of us and still rack up trillions in additional debt. That sure makes sense.
Almost no media are reporting this.
Starve the beast!
NO taxes on tips and SS.
Trump 2024
Social Security was a tax when it was taken out of the paychecks of every American and matched by their employer, then when the person gets old enough to start withdrawing the tax, the government wants to tax it again, seems to me that has always been double taxation.
Did you see what Australia has done. ..
They will eventually when they have been issued the democrat talking points
The biggest problem with taxation of social security benefits is that the various “thresholds” have NEVER BEEN ADJUSTED/INDEXED FOR INFLATION. So thresholds that in the early 1980s limited such taxation to TRULY high income taxpayers they no longer do. So what we got was, in essence, creeping tax increases on social security benefits.
When big government pundits talk about tax reduction, they see it as the assault on government’s “right” to people’s income. Government needs to live within a budget that doesn’t infringe on my rights to keep my income.
When big government pundits talk about tax reduction, they see it as the assault on government’s “right” to people’s income. Government needs to live within a budget that doesn’t infringe on my rights to keep my income.
At a minimum, index the threshold that causes taxes on SS. I don’t think it was ever increased - that’s why so many owe taxes now
I didn't take any cash out of that stock account and just moved money...but I got a bill from the IRS.
Save Money. Get rid of Department of Education, Department of the Interior, ATF, pare down the IRS, cut down number of aides to Congress. Privatize the USPS.
Um the economy improves and total tax revenue actually goes up. Realities of over-taxation 101.
Why is spending trillions of the peoples money never a problem but reducing taxes always is billed as bringing financial ruin to the country? Social Security is money I earned but never received and now when I am to receive the money I earned that was withheld from my paychecks the Government makes me pay income taxes on that money. Perhaps if we hadn’t spent untold billions on a no win war in Ukraine, hadn’t built a multi million dollar pier in Gaza that was destroyed by the sea in a matter of weeks only to have the million in humanitarian aid that managed to get unloaded stolen by Hamas or sent millions to finance Chinese bioweapons research at the Wuhan lab we could “afford” to give retirees a tax break
Hear, hear!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I believe that the congress is the branch that creates new taxes.
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