Yes, I Want To Pay Federal Taxes On My Social Security

[Wonder Why]

12. Actually, there is an income cutoff. Taxable SS is like other ordinary taxable income. The more you

earn, the more you pay. So my taxable SS is just the same as my taxable IRA distribution. The government says to add it all up, subtract your deductions and then pay X% based on your income.

But those with low incomes have less percentage of their income (or none of it if low enough) that is taxable. But whatever that amount is that is taxable, it is just another source of income.

If I had income ONLY from social security, probably none of it would be taxed. Given that I have a little other income, some small amount of SS would be taxable but I probably would still not pay any income tax because my net income would still be too low to pay anything. Given I make a little over the cutoff, I'm still in a low or zero tax bracket if I have enough deductions.

So, you are partially correct. Those over the 50K limit do have taxable income but they may NOT be paying any taxes and if they do, how much tax is taken out of the SS income depends on how much they make in other ways. So a person with $100K in total income including SS would be in a different bracket than someone earning $300K including the same SS and thus would pay a lower percentage tax on the SS income even though they got the same SS dollar amount as the higher income person.