Social Security offers different benefits for US citizens. They can help you with your retirement, when you have a disability, and when you are a survivor. As a worker, you know that you need to pay taxes. However, some of you might have started getting a retirement benefit recently. You may have been wondering whether you must pay anything to Social Security. After all, we want to make things right to help sustain Social Security and avoid paying more.
There are two different possibilities in which you must pay taxes for Social Security benefits. It will only be on up to 85% of your benefit from Social Security and when you exceed the limits. Thus, if you file a Federal tax return individually and your combined income is higher than $25,000, you will have to pay taxes. The second possibility is for a joint return. In this case, your spouse and you can only have a combined income of less than $32,000. If it is more than $32,000, you will again end up paying taxes.
Do not forget that for those who are married and you opt for filing a separate return, it is more than likely that you have to pay taxes on your benefits. It is true that when you must pay taxes, it is due to other sources of income. When you have other earnings coming from any taxable income, you must report it on your tax return. The amount of Tax you pay will be according to IRS’s rules. IRS stands for Internal Revenue Service.
When will you receive your Social Security Benefit Statement?
In order to know how much you earned in one particular year, you will receive a Statement. This Social Security Benefit Statement will be available in January. It shows how much money you got the previous year. In this way, you can check whether you are obliged to pay or not. So it might come in handy when you are doing the federal income tax return.
As you may be worried because you have not received it or you have lost it. You can still do something about it and can easily get it online. This SSBS is a Form SSA-1099. All you need to do is have a my Social Security account. You need to log in if you have already registered. It will not take you long to create one though. Once you manage to log in with your my Social Security account, you need to click on “Replacement Documents.”
Once you know how much money you earned from your Social Security benefit as well as from other sources of income, you will see if you have to pay or not. If you have to pay, you can arrange to pay it quarterly. By doing so, you can make payments over time to the IRS. On the other hand, some people prefer to have taxes withheld from their Social Security benefits. It is up to you the way you choose to pay for it.