02.17.10
Cap It
You pay 7.65 cents in Social Security taxes for every dollar you earn . . . until your wages hit $106,800. At that point, the SS tax ceases. It’s call the Social Security “wage base.” The amount is indexed for inflation, but it didn’t go up in 2010 and it’s not expected to go up in 2011. The reason? Social Security recipients didn’t get a cost-of-living hike in 2010 or 2011. By law, the wage base can’t go up if benefits don’t rise.
Of course, Congress could just change that law, but such two-facedness would be rare, even for the Beltway (”You old guys don’t get an inflation adjustment, but you younger guys pay more like there was an inflation adjustment”).
The wage base, incidentally, is projected to start climbing again after 2011: to $111,3000 in 2012 and $115,200 for 2013.
