The 2017 Social Security wage
base for computing the Social Security component of the FICA tax is 127,200, up from $118,500.
The maximum withholding for Social Security tax for 2017 is $7,886.40.
The self-employment tax imposed on self-employed people
is 12.4% Social Security tax on the first $127,200 of self-employment income,
for a maximum of $15,772.80, plus
2.90% Medicare tax on the all self-employment income.
Click here for a chart of historical contribution and
benefit bases from 1937 through 2017.
The Social Security Administration has also announced -
“Monthly Social
Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for more than 65
million Americans will increase 0.3 percent in 2017, the Social Security
Administration announced today.
The 0.3 percent cost-of-living
adjustment (COLA) will begin with benefits payable to more than 60 million
Social Security beneficiaries in January 2017. Increased payments to more than
8 million SSI beneficiaries will begin on December 30, 2016. The Social Security
Act ties the annual COLA to the increase in the Consumer Price Index as
determined by the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
TTFN
1 comment:
Social Security is just one big government administered pyramid scheme that is a bigger and more volatile ticking time bomb than our national debt. The government gives a piddly 0.3% cost of living increase, then considerably increases the wage base in order to pay it.
According to an online retirement calculator, if I wait until age 70 to get my benefits, I'll get $ 48,000 per year or $ 4000 per month - yeah, right! Unless they take the modest Social Security surplus while they still have one and put it into some real investments with a little more risk but a lot more return (i.e. AAA corporate bonds or munis) rather than US treasuries, I can't see this happening.
I was at a car dealership this past weekend browsing for a new car and was told by an employee that about half the salespeople there are "retired", they just come in to sell cars for supplementary income. God help me if my life comes to that. I suppose I'll just half to keep preparing tax returns while I throw away 12.4% of my self-employment income to the Social Security pyramid scheme from which I will get very little, if anything, back.
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