“Social Security is not projected to disappear when its trust fund reserves are depleted [in 2032]. Workers and employers will continue paying Social Security payroll taxes, and those revenues will continue funding benefits. The issue is whether those ongoing revenues will be sufficient to pay all benefits promised under current law....
“Current law does not lay out a simple process for handling that situation.... Lawmakers have several ways to improve the system’s finances. Congress could raise payroll tax rates, increase the amount of earnings subject to Social Security taxes, modify future benefits, change retirement ages, dedicate revenue from other sources, or combine several approaches....
“Each approach spreads the cost differently. Higher payroll tax rates would increase contributions from workers and employers, while changes to benefit formulas could affect current or future beneficiaries. Raising the retirement age would shift more of the adjustment toward future retirees, while increasing the taxable wage base could place more of the cost on higher earners and their employers....
“For someone building a retirement plan today, there is no reliable way to know which combination [of options] Congress will...choose. That makes it more useful to prepare for a range of reasonable outcomes than to build the plan around one legislative forecast....
“[Therefore, for retirees and those close to retirement, the most] useful planning...is not trying to guess...what Congress will do. It is understanding how dependent your retirement is on receiving Social Security exactly as promised and whether the rest of your plan can absorb a less favorable outcome.”
– From a mid-August article at RetirementResearcher.com. The 2026 annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees, released in June, projected that the program will not be able to pay full retirement benefits as of late 2032, unless Congress acts.
