By Mary Johnson, editor Your Part D drug plan would never tell you this, but the alarming fact is that there is no limit to what you might spend out-of-pocket for your prescriptions drugs in any given year. While t ...
Category: Issues
How Using The Chained CPI To Calculate COLAs Would Affect Your Benefits
The newly enacted tax legislation calls for adjusting tax brackets and the standard deduction using the more slowly growing Chained consumer price index (CPI). What would switching to the new index for calculating Socia ...
Benefit Bulletin: April 2018
Easier Said Than Done: Public Unconvinced That Medicaid Spending Should Be Cut By Chairman Art "Coop" Cooper About one in five older and disabled Medicare beneficiaries has income so low that their state Medicaid p ...
Medicare Starts Mailing New Cards In April — Beware Of Scams!
Start watching the mail for your new Medicare card. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services will start mailing the cards this month and plans to replace all existing Medicare cards over the next year — by April of ...
18% Of Workers Pay No Social Security Taxes On Earnings Over $128,400
Most working people pay Social Security taxes on every dollar earned and many pay more in Social Security taxes than in federal income taxes. Yet nearly one out of five workers — some 18% — pay no Social Security taxes ...
Social Security COLAs Need to Double and Medicare Part B Increases Cut in Half, to Ensure Benefit Adequacy
(Washington, DC) – Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLA) would need to double their rate of growth and Medicare Part B premium increases would need to slow by half their historic rate to provide greater Socia ...
How A Provision of Tax Reform Increases Chances of Lower COLAs
By Mary Johnson, editor The main source of funding for Social Security comes from the payroll taxes that workers pay into the program. But there are two other sources of revenues: taxes that retirees pay on their Soc ...
Chained CPI Would Cut Average Social Security Benefits
(Washington, DC) – Higher taxes — lower benefits — more complexity. A new, more slowly growing consumer price index (CPI), known as the chained CPI, promises the worst of all worlds for tens of millions retirees, disabl ...
Taxes Take A Growing Percentage of Social Security Benefits
(Washington, DC) – About 56 percent of all Social Security households pay taxes on a portion of their Social Security benefits, according to a national survey by The Senior Citizens League. “Recently enacted changes in ...
Q & A: Will my Social Security benefits be taxable?
Q: I retired last year, but my spouse continues to work. This will be our first tax season with Social Security benefit income. Will my Social Security benefits be taxable? A: If you’re receiving Social Security in ...
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