According to Representative Thomas Massey of Kentucky in today’s article at the Washington Examiner, it comes as a shock to many senior Social Security beneficiaries that their Social Security benefits are being taxed…twice:
“Most people don’t even know this happens…When they passed it there weren’t many squeaky wheels.”
Rep. Massie is the sponsor of the “Senior Citizens Tax Elimination Act,” a bill that aims to eliminate federal income taxes on Social Security payments to many beneficiaries.
Since 1983, the federal government has taxed a portion of high-income earning retirees’ Social Security benefits–on top of taxing worker contributions made to Social Security.
Originally, this affected a relatively small number of retirees. But as time has passed and inflation has risen, this small number of beneficiaries has grown to around 42%.
“This has been constructed kind of to be a Ponzi scheme. They are scraping money off the payments to make other payments.”
