Social Security Taxation and Tax Reform–A Missed Opportunity?
Tax reform enacted late last year brought with it a number of well-received economic incentives, but one thing it didn’t do was address the issue of taxation of Social Security benefits. In an article posted today on www.fool.com, The Motley Fool’s Dan Caplinger takes a look at the history of this benefit taxation–a regulation that, as explained by Caplinger, “effectively takes away some of those hard-earned benefits, which is especially painful for retirees looking to survive on fixed incomes.” The fundamental shortcoming in the taxation provisions enacted decades ago, he explains, is the absence of any form of indexing of the threshold income levels on which the taxing is based.
Read Caplinger’s analysis of the taxation issue here. Given Social Security’s much-publicized solvency issue, it’s likely that there will be more attention focused on program modifications that will impact workers and beneficiaries in the weeks, months, and years ahead. In fact, this basic taxation issue is one of the components of the “The Social Security Guarantee Act of 2017” developed by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) and currently being advanced in Washington. The Act proposed by AMAC specifically targets the taxation issue by advocating an increase in the adjusted gross income exclusion thresholds now in place. Learn more about this Act here…