Thursday, February 12, 2015

CBO blogs on how Social Security benefits are taxed

Joshua Shakin and Kurt Seibert of the Congressional Budget Office have a nice blog explaining the taxation of Social Security benefits, how much is collected and who pays the bills. Check it out here.

Individual Income Taxes Owed as a Share of Social Security Benefits, 2014

1 comment:

JoeTheEconomist said...

Andrew,

I wrote a very similar article a few months back. I think that they are missing two large points.

These taxes are falling on people who are barely above poverty. The people who are getting hit the hardest are those people who saved with tax-deferred accounts - in order to avoid taxation. The withdrawals are triggering these taxes on Social Security benefits.

I forget the exact threshold, but I think it is around $50,000 of outside income is where you max-out these taxes.