The emails say nearly 9 in 10 Social Security beneficiaries won’t pay income taxes on their benefits in the future. But the Trump tax law did not directly address Social Security.
The Social Security Administration has sent a misleading email to beneficiaries stating that Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cuts and spending law eliminates taxes on Social Security benefits for most recipients.
“The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy,” said the email, which multiple beneficiaries shared with NBC News.
“This email went to every Social Security subscriber and every word of it is a lie. Social Security benefits are still taxed. This big, ugly bill doesn’t change that,” New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote on X. “It’s disturbing to see Trump hijack a public institution to push blatant misinformation.”
The word ‘standard’ does not appear in the article.
What are you talking about?
This is what is in the article:
But this only even affects people who have both SSI/SSDI and enough additional income to get over that standard deduction + the additional deduction.
https://smartasset.com/retirement/is-social-security-income-taxable
The average social security payout is ~$1980 a month, or $23,760 yearly.
(not sure if thats before or after your $185 medicare deductions, ie premiums, probably before, but w/e)
So… if your only income is Social Security, chances are you never had to pay any taxes on it anyway.
What bumping the deduction does… assuming it is actually as described in the article… means that if you have another source of income, a pension or 401k, a trust paying you out, part time employment, whatever…
Well now you can take more of that money, up to I guess $31k for a single person, before you would start to get taxed.
…
So… woohoo, a fairly small amount of people can now live a life of poverty, instead of abject poverty, until taxes kick in.
For the record, with a 1/3 rent to income ratio, thats uh… now you can move up to $860 from $660 rental.
Or you can factor in that additional $200 a month as the cost of losing your food stamps (whole lot of social security recipients on that) and the just increasing cost of food now that no one is working the fields, because they’re scary bad icky brown people who need to all be fed to alligators, apparently.
Oh right and Section 8 was gutted, so a whole lot of Social Security recipients will either be getting kicked out of their housing (section 8 is a subsidy to landlords, many low income land/slumlords will go broke without it) or seeing their rents jacked up.
…
Oh right, theres also the whole… substantially gainful income thing.
If you’re on Social Security, see this tax deduction cap being raised, and then go get additional income?
Well, now you may not qualify for any payments from Social Secuirty anymore, at all.
SGI calculations and codes are waaaay too complex for me to summarize here, but arguably thats the point, to confuse the shit out of people and then either discourage them from economic activity, or just kick them off the benefits.
…
Also also, just for fun… that average of $1980 a month, average Soc Sec payout?
Assuming a month with 4 solid weeks, 40 hrs a week… thats $12.38 an hour, thats what you’re living off of.
I don’t even think you can get a full meal at McDonalds for one hour of that anymore.