As President Donald Trump’s signature tax-and-spending legislation made its way through Congress, a PolitiFact reader wrote to ask about the bill’s impact on Social Security’s long-term ability to pay out benefits.
The reader had seen our recent fact-check of Trump’s statement that the bill will deliver the promise of “no tax on Social Security.” We rated that statement Mostly False: The bill will provide a tax break for Americans ages 65 and over, but it won’t eliminate the Social Security tax entirely. Some 24 million Social Security beneficiaries will still be taxed on some of their checks from the program, according to Congress’ bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation’s staff director. Many of those are younger than 65 and thus ineligible for the new tax deduction.
The PolitiFact reader asked, “As I understand your fact checking, the taxes paid on Social Security go to the Social Security trust fund. Does this make the date when benefits will be cut for all come sooner?”
The answer is yes — and by experts’ analyses, anyone born after 1967 could see the effect.
Taxation of Social Security benefits began with 1983 legislation that was designed to help shore up Social Security’s finances. Certain tax revenues, including the taxation of Social Security benefits, are deposited directly into the Social Security trust fund, to pay for current beneficiaries.
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Once the trust fund runs out of money, it will trigger automatic, across-the-board cuts.
In their 2025 annual report, Social Security trustees estimated that the program’s trust fund would become insolvent in 2033. That was before Congress approved Trump’s bill.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a fiscally hawkish group, ran the numbers on the Senate version of the bill, which the House approved without changes on July 3. It is headed to Trump’s desk, and he’s said he will sign it.
The group calculated that the changes from Trump’s bill will reduce Social Security tax revenues by $30 billion per year — meaning the trust fund would be exhausted several months earlier, in 2032 rather than in 2033.
The bill’s estimated impact on Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund — which operates in a similar way to the Social Security trust fund — means the fund would run out mid 2032, not late 2033.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget also projected that when insolvency hits in 2032, Social Security recipients would see their benefits cut by 24%, while payments from the Medicare trust fund will decline by 11%.
