Last week I got an email from “Donald Trump.” Subject line: “Here’s what happened to Social Security.” The body of the email explains (his caps, not mine) “I just signed into LAW something I’m very proud of: NO TAXES ON SOCIAL SECURITY!”
Trump’s claim is a bald-faced lie.
Start with the good news: the first half of his claim doesn’t appear to be a lie. Trump undeniably signed the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” into law on July 4, and judging by the frequency of his emails on this topic (this is the fifth missive I’ve received in the last week from the president making this precise claim), he does appear to be very proud of the new law.
But that’s where the truth ends and the lies begin.
In the 331 pages of the new law, there are no changes to the way Social Security benefits are taxed under the federal income tax law. In fact, there have only been two meaningful changes in the federal income tax treatment of Social Security benefits since the New Deal program was introduced.
The first was in 1983, when Congress enacted (and President Ronald Reagan signed) a bipartisan bill that, for the first time since Social Security was created in 1935, included up to half of Social Security benefits in federal adjusted gross income (AGI) for some higher-income seniors. This meant that some high-income seniors could be taxed on some of their benefits.
The second was in 1993, when Congress enacted (and President Bill Clinton signed) a law that made it possible for as much as 85 percent of Social Security benefits to be included in federal AGI for a smaller number of the best-off seniors.
The resulting three-tier structure (no tax on low-income Social Security recipients, up to 50 percent of benefits subject to tax for some better-income seniors, and up to 85 percent of benefits subject to tax for the best-off retirees) has remained virtually unchanged ever since—and the new law does nothing to modify it.
So why is Trump saying, in all-caps no less, that he has eliminated taxes on Social Security?
This transparently false claim rests on one provision of the new law that allows a $6,000 income tax deduction for taxpayers 65 and over. The deduction is gradually phased out for taxpayers with incomes over $75,000 ($150,000 for married couples). This means that each eligible senior can reduce their taxable income from all sources by up to $6,000. That includes wages, capital gains, dividends, gambling winnings, and (potentially) taxable Social Security benefits.
So it’s possible for a taxpayer who currently pays income tax on some portion of their Social Security benefits to pay less tax as a result of the new deduction. But this isn’t an especially likely outcome because of two intersecting features of the tax law.
First, the (limited) tax on Social Security benefits is designed to fall only on upper-income retirees. Second, the new $6,000 senior deduction is designed to exclude many of those same upper-income retirees.
Put another way, the beneficiaries of the new deduction are likely those seniors who aren’t paying federal income taxes on their Social Security to begin with, and those upper-income seniors who won’t receive the new deduction are precisely the ones who are paying tax on some fraction (again, never more than 85 percent) of their Social Security benefits right now.
This unlikely fractional tax benefit is obviously very far from constituting “NO TAXES ON SOCIAL SECURITY.” And, like the tax cuts for tip income and overtime that dominated candidate Trump’s tax platform speeches in the runup to the 2024 election, this “tax cut for seniors who may or may not have taxable Social Security but probably don’t” is set to disappear entirely because Congress chose not to make any of these provisions permanent and will allow them to expire after 2028, even as he made almost all the tax cuts for the rich permanent.
This outright lie isn’t limited to the informal emails the president sends to his supporters: it’s also right there on the White House website for all to see. A page on the site entitled “President Trump Has Kept His Promises” claims that “No Tax on Social Security… is now the law of the land.”
Astonishingly, these blatant falsehoods are only slightly more artless than a similar message infamously sent by the Social Security Administration immediately after the bill’s passage. The message, deleted after a chorus of fact-checkers debunked it, is preserved for posterity on social media and claims that “the new law contains a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries.”
For those wondering why some Americans continue to support President Trump in the face of policies that endanger their health and economic status, the Trump administration’s false claims about its achievements on Social Security taxation offer an obvious reason: because Trump is lying to them about what he has done.
