Published March 11, 2025
Congressional Republicans are struggling to figure out how to fit all of President Donald Trump’s new proposed tax cuts into their reconciliation bill while also extending the popular 2017 individual reductions. One of the stumbling blocks is his desire to eliminate income taxes on Social Security payments, a provision that raises nearly $51 billion a year and helps keep the system solvent.
Trump is right that too many seniors pay taxes on benefits they depend on, but there’s a better way to accomplish his goal. The GOP should instead triple the income level that seniors have to meet before their benefits are taxed instead of abolishing taxes for all seniors.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
