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Social Security Tax Changes in the New Bill: What Seniors Need to Know
Narration provided by Wondervox
The “Big Beautiful Bill Social Security tax” debate has dominated headlines after Congress passed President Trump’s signature legislation on July 3, 2025. Touted as a sweeping tax reform, the bill promises historic relief for millions of seniors. But what does it really mean for Social Security taxes, and who stands to benefit most? Here’s the latest, verified breakdown on how the Big Beautiful Bill impacts Social Security taxation, what’s fact versus fiction, and what retirees should expect next …
On July 3, 2025, the House of Representatives approved the Big Beautiful Bill, sending it to President Trump’s desk for signature. The bill, spanning over 900 pages, is one of the most ambitious tax and spending packages in recent history. While President Trump and his allies have repeatedly claimed that the bill would “eliminate taxes on Social Security,” the reality is more nuanced.
The legislation introduces a new tax deduction of up to $6,000 for seniors aged 65 and older, effective from 2025 through 2028. This deduction is phased out for individuals earning more than $75,000 and married couples above $150,000, meaning wealthier retirees will see little to no benefit. The deduction is designed to offset the amount of Social Security income subject to federal taxes for most middle- and lower-income seniors.
Key Point Summary
- The Big Beautiful Bill does not eliminate Social Security taxes for all seniors.
- Seniors 65 and older get a new, temporary tax deduction—up to $6,000—phasing out for higher incomes.
- About 88% of seniors will see their Social Security tax liability reduced or eliminated, but roughly 24 million Americans will still owe taxes on their benefits.
- The bill’s changes are set to expire after 2028, raising questions about long-term relief.
- The new deductions do not apply to seniors under 65, dependents, survivors, or disabled workers below that age.
- Critics warn the bill could accelerate Social Security trust fund insolvency
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One Thing or Another Column: It’s About Time
Narration provided by Wondevox
By Mark McNease
Time is not so much an arrow as a comet we ride, streaking across the sky.
You can tell from the first sentence I was 62 when I wrote this. Five years later my perspective on the fleeting nature of time hasn’t changed. I’ve long said that “time is a non-renewable resource,” and I still believe that. The older we get, the less of it we have. That’s not maudlin, it’s just true. As yet another friend died recently, it seemed like a good time to revisit the subject. Pun intended.
The good news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. The bad news is that I’m old enough to collect Social Security. When I was twenty, I never imagined being forty. It seemed so far away from that youthful ground I stood upon with naive bravado. Then when I hit forty, I thought fifty would be the last milestone to publicly mark, quietly retiring birthday observations with the exception of a few close friends and family. And finally, when I approached the age when referring to oneself as a senior becomes culturally appropriate, I decided I could at minimum look forward to collecting a monthly stipend for my troubles. We should all be paid for getting old, at least those of us lucky enough to live that long.
I was a wild child in many ways, defiant to a fault. I became a teenager whose rebellion was sometimes life threatening, and eventually I grew into a man with the sorts of weaknesses and appetites that make it slightly remarkable I’m still here. So seeing a direct deposit into my checking account every month from the Social Security Administration is a reminder that a lot of people don’t survive to collect this modest reward. Cancer gets them, or leukemia, or car accidents, or sudden organ failure. A thousand different ways to end this train ride called life before it gets to the last few stations. Friends I lost to HIV are long dead, and memories I have of them are flashcards of much younger men. Were they to stand in front of me again, I may recognize them, but they probably would not recognize me forty years later.
Time is not so much an arrow as a comet we ride, streaking across the sky. We only think it drags because we’re on it, like riders saddling imaginary horses that stand stock still while the ground moves beneath us. We experience time when it is behind us or in front of us, but seldom when it is right where we are. And so it seems to move slowly or quickly, its speed determined by our anticipation of something not yet occurred, or our disbelief at how much is behind us.
It’s only fitting we be paid while we’re still young enough to benefit from it. It’s the least society can do to compensate us for our patience. It seems time really is money, and just as fleeting. We may not spend either of them all in one place, but we will certainly spend them all in one lifetime.
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Savvy Senior: Who’s Eligible for Social Security Disability Benefits?
Narration provided by Wondervox
By Jim Miller
Dear Savvy Senior,
What do I need to do to get disability benefits from Social Security? I’m 60 years old and have a medical condition that doesn’t allow me to work at my job anymore, but I’ve read that getting disability benefits is very difficult.
Need Help
Dear Need,
Getting Social Security Disability Insurance benefits (SSDI) when you’re unable to work can indeed be challenging. Each year, approximately 2 million people apply for SSDI, but around two-thirds of them are denied, because most applicants fail to prove that they’re disabled and can’t work. Here are some steps you can take that can help improve your odds.
Are You Disabled?
The first thing you need to find out is if your health condition qualifies you for Social Security disability benefits.
You generally will be eligible only if you have a physical or mental impairment severe enough that it prevents you from working in your current, or past line of work, for at least a year.
There is no such thing as a partial disability benefit. If you’re fit enough to work part-time, and you’re earning more than $1,620 ($2,700 if you’re blind) a month on average in 2025, your application will be denied. But, if you’re not working or are working but earning below those limits, your application may be considered.
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New Weekly Survey: If You Could Be ONE of These Things
New weekly survey! Only ONE answer preferred this time. Would you be thinner, younger, richer, kinder? Or something else.
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A Smashing Smashwords Summer Sale! All My eBooks Free for July
Another summer, another sale at Smashwords. Talk about freedom! You can download all (that’s ALL) my eBooks for free through the month of July.
You can also find dozens and dozens of other free and discounted books by your favorite authors, and ones who’ll soon join your list of must-reads.
FIND MY BOOKS HERE (be sure to click on each one for the freebie) or just go to Smashwords summer sale page and start browsing. Hot reading fun in the summer time!
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Still Here: Frenchtown Celebrate’s World Shortest Pride Parade
Whether or not this really is the world’s shortest Pride parade, it sure was fun! Something for the local haters to rage about.
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This Week’s Survey: What’s Your Favorite Time of Day?
We’re back with a new survey created very early this morning! That’s a hint as to what my favorite time of day is. I also love those end-of-the-day hours watching TV with my husband, the worries of the world and the stresses of daily living gone silent for the night.
What’s your favorite time of day? TAKE THE SURVEY HERE.
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The Weekly Readlines June 23
BIG CUP: THE WEEK’S STOP STORIES
Or maybe just my favorites …
Peace President Starts a War
Who didn’t see that coming?Medicare And Social Security Go-Broke Dates Pushed Up
Get it while you can, folksNIH To Phase Out Guidelines On HIV Treatments
Larry Kramer always said they want us deadThousands Pour Into Downtown For Raleigh Pride, Declaring ‘Equality Hurts No One’
We hold these truths to be self-evidentLGBTQ
New LGBTQ+ Archive To Save Scrubbed Federal Resources – Washington Blade
Sidetrack Could Become The First Gay Bar In An American Airport (Chicago’s O’Hare)
Transgender Health, Aging, And Advocacy: A Podcast With Noelle Marie Javier And Jace Flatt
Teenager Arrested For Vandalizing San Francisco’s Massive Pink Triangle
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Book Reviews: What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution, by John Birdsall, AND Dining Out, by Erik Piepenburg
Narration provided by Wondervox
“What is Queer Food? How We Served a Revolution” by John Birdsall
c.2025, W.W. Norton $29.99 304 pages
“Dining Out: First Dates, Defiant Nights, and Last Call Disco Fries at America’s Gay Restaurants” by Erik Piepenburg
c.2025, Grand Central $30.00 352 pagesYou thought a long time about who sits where.
Compatibility is key for a good dinner party, so place cards were the first consideration; you have at least one left-hander on your guest list, and you figured his comfort into your seating chart. You want the conversation to flow, which is music to your ears. And you did a good job but, as you’ll see with these two great books on dining LGBTQIA-style, it’s sometimes not who sits where, but whose recipes were used…
When you first pick up “What is Queer Food?” by John Birdsall, you might miss the subtitle: “How We Served
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On the Map: On the Map: Youngstown Ohio and Fellows Riverside Gardens
Narration provided by Wondervox
By Mark McNease
We just got back from a quick three-night trip to Youngstown, Ohio. We hadn’t seen my in-laws for eleven years, including Frank’s niece Tess who was just 4 at the time. She’s now a 14-year-old, and very much a teenager. Brother-in-law Brett and mother Melanie were as changed as you’d expect two people to be after that much time, yet much the same. Now in their forties, they’re raising Tess as best they can, and it was a pleasure to see them again—except for the grueling drive. When the GPS says it’s 6 hours and 15 minutes, you know that’s a 9 hour trip. Bathroom breaks, meals, gas, and the inevitable bouts of traffic. I personally dread long drives like that, and when we make our annual trip to Provincetown for our timeshare week in August, we split it up by spending a night halfway there and halfway back.
I don’t think I’ve ever been to Ohio, despite having grown up in Indiana. The similarities in the landscape were obvious. Both states, at least Youngtown and northern Indiana, are mostly flat and a little colorless, but it also reminded me of my hometown and the surrounding area.
Now for some scoop on Youngstown and the wonderful park we visited.
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Tech Talk: To AI or Not to AI—Some Pros and Cons
Narration provided by Wondervox
By Mark McNease
It feels increasingly like something we can’t get away from even if we want to.
As someone who embraces technology I think it’s important to consider the ongoing controversies surrounding AI (artificial intelligence). Forms of it have been around for a long time. Rudimentary applications have been used in everything from self-checkout kiosks in grocery stores, to voice activation and automatic teller machines (ATMs). And now it’s being introduced—imposed?—in ways we often don’t want, from typing Word documents with annoying AI ‘assistants’ popping up on the page,’ to emails and texts that insist on writing themselves. It feels increasingly like something we can’t get away from even if we want to.
As a one-man production studio, I consider AI a tool that helps me accomplish my goals and maintain an output. I would never ‘write’ a novel with AI, but I use it to generate images and to do the sorts of research I used to perform online with key words and a Wikipedia page. It’s my responsibility to make sure that information is correct, but the hunting and gathering is made tremendously easier with AI. I also find the technology exciting in many ways. I don’t think we will ever be replaced by AI, or even if that would be such a bad thing for the planet, but there is a lot of fear around it.
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‘A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due’ Now An Episodic Audio Edition
Welcome to the episodic audio edition of A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due. Fasten your headphones and enjoy one new chapter each week. This is not an audiobook in the conventional sense, and no audiobook narrators living or dead were harmed in its production. This is a way for me to share some of my writing in an audio format. So settle back and enjoy the screams. You can find all the episodes here.
A House in the Woods 2: The Devil’s Due picks up where A House in the Woods left off. Laurel Calloway is still in the mysterious town of Strickland, New Jersey, where nothing is as it appears to be. Two years have gone by, and they’ve been good to the Calloways. Laurel and her husband Jeremy have a new house, and a new family with baby Isabel about to celebrate her first birthday. Everything seems perfect, until Laurel begins to have dreams. Bad dreams. Something tells her these dreams could really be memories. But of what? Of whom, and of when?
Did she really run over a woman in the road at night? Had they once had a dog? Why are these things trying so hard to surface, swimming slowly up from her subconscious? The more she begins to tell the people around her about these dreams, the more convinced she is that they’re part of it, and that these nightmares aren’t really dreams at all. Page after page, the pace escalates as Laurel begins to learn the truth and plot her escape. But will she succeed? The Devil is in the details.
PROLOGUE AND CHAPTER 1