Beto advocates raising retirement age and means testing for SS

[customerserviceguy]

29. We already have means testing for Social Security

It is called taxation of up to 85% of one's benefits, if one has other income, including that from tax-exempt bonds.

Before the early 1980's reforms, all Social Security income was tax free. The reforms of that time called for possibly taxing up to 50% of one's benefits, the theory being that half of a person's Social Security benefit was from their employer's share of FICA taxes, which the beneficiary never paid income tax on. The other half was a return of the beneficiary's own FICA taxes, which they were indeed subject to income tax on.

Also, the 1980's law exempted $32,000 of income for a married couple (for the purpose of figuring how much Social Security benefit to tax, and $25,000 for a single person. Those amounts were never indexed, and thirty-five years later, we have a lot of folks who planned diligently for their retirement being double taxed on the money they had taken from them as FICA taxes during their working years.

I was a tax accountant in the 1980's and I knew that this would eventually bite a lot of middle class people in the ass.