Social Security Benefits

Members of the Maryland Association of Certified Public Accountants are answering readers' tax questions through April 15.Q: I draw Social Security both from the United States and from a foreign country. I know taxes are due on the Social Security payments from Uncle Sam, but must I also report and pay tax on the payments from the foreign country?A: Generally, a U.S. citizen is taxed on all income received, regardless of source. The portion of the foreign Social Security benefits you must include in your income is calculated based on the amount of benefits expected to be paid to you (based upon your age)

SOCIAL SECURITY -- Social Security beneficiaries have a particular stake in President Clinton's plan to raise taxes on tobacco in the name of health. Such a tax increase would have the indirect effect of raising Social Security benefits by roughly $3 a month. The reason? Social Security benefits are tied to the Consumer Price Index, and government officials said Friday that a 75-cent tax increase on cigarettes would raise the inflation index by 0.5 percentage point. That, in turn, would produce a $35 annual raise for the average Social Security beneficiary.

CANTON, Miss. - President Bush traveled to one of the country's poorest regions yesterday to assure Americans that the Social Security restructuring plan he has in mind would improve on the system's 70-year-old promise to provide a safety net for those in need. Yet in appearing before relatively well-paid workers at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., Bush was addressing a middle-class constituency whose future Social Security benefits could be squeezed by his plan. Bush told workers that he wanted Congress to craft a plan that would ensure that future retirees received a large enough benefit to keep them above the poverty line.

The op-ed written by Robert Koulish in the March 15 Baltimore Sun ("Punishing immigrants") was interesting. He implies that Illegal immigrants should be allowed to remain in our country, work in our businesses and eat up our taxpayer dollars with education for their children, hospital and doctor coverage paid by our tax dollars, and when caught they should not be sent back to their home country. What other country would allow illegal immigrants to do this? I am sure that if the new health care bill is passed that he would want them to be included.

WASHINGTON -- As President Clinton's economic program begins to take shape, it appears increasingly likely that he will call for higher taxes on Social Security benefits received by the 8 million Americans who have outside incomes.The proposal is considered by many of the congressional leaders Mr. Clinton has consulted to be among the best of a bad lot of options for addressing the nation's deficit crisis, and it is on the short list of alternatives the president took with him this weekend for a economic strategy session at Camp David, Md.Although raising taxes on Social Security benefits would spark an immediate outcry from the influential advocates for elderly Americans, it holds the dual appeal of fitting Mr. Clinton's theme of balanced sacrifice while also offering a substantial source of new revenue.

AT THE SAME TIME Congress is contemplating plans to reduce the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers, it is raising the amount of money seniors can earn without reducing their Social Security benefits. The logic behind these contradictory efforts is difficult to fathom.Congress should be removing all disincentives to working without selectively choosing among various age groups. With the entire Social Security system headed toward insolvency in the next century, all measures that keep seniors working longer and delaying retirement are in the national interest.

If President Clinton doesn't do something this year about the financial time bomb and regressive structure built into the Social Security system, chances are he never will. Almost anything he proposes will trigger a fire storm of protests and phone calls from the well-organized gray-power lobbies. But this is something he must attack, not just as part of his deficit-reduction package but to protect his own generation of Baby Boomers.One thing that should be high on the Clinton agenda is a quick rise to 67 years from 65 years in the retirement age required for full Social Security benefits.

The President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security came up with a Chicken Little conclusion, but the sky isn't falling. The panel's irresponsible interim report gives a distorted view of the Social Security dilemma in an attempt to promote President Bush's individual investment accounts. On this commission, there's no room for alternative routes to put the Social Security system back in balance. What a shame. The president's preferred solution isn't even popular within his own party.

There's a cola war going on, but it has nothing to do with Coke versus Pepsi. It began earlier this month, when the Congressional Budget Office projected that for the first time in three decades, there would be no cost-of-living adjustment - or COLA - for Social Security recipients in 2010, 2011 and 2012. These adjustments are designed to keep elderly Social Security recipients from losing purchasing power as prices rise, so it's not surprising that the initial reaction was one of concern.