Readers angered by SS column

Opinion

June 2, 2012

Readers angered by SS column

By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Sat Jun 02, 2012, 06:29 PM CDT

STARKVILLE — The first angry phone call from a reader came a little after 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Other communications — emails, more phone calls and messages, and a text or two — would follow.

Here’s why the readers felt the need — in varying degrees of intensity and courtesy — to tell me why they disagreed with one point in my most recent column.

In that column, I sought to make the case that taxing and spending should be the focus of the 2012 presidential and congressional elections based on the fact that over the next 25 years, some 77 million Americans — the vaunted “Baby Boomers” — will begin drawing Social Security checks, collecting Medicare benefits and receiving long-term care under Medicaid.

That fact, in concert with the fact that there are already 67.3 million Americans who are dependent on taxpayers for food, shelter, income, education, health care and other support, seems clear enough. Entitlement programs now account for some 70 percent of all federal spending.

The third leg of the tripod upon which I tried to build my argument was the fact that some 49.5 percent of all Americans pay no federal income tax. To explain how that number can exist, I sought to quantify just what demographics aren’t paying federal income taxes.

First, I cited those with who pay no income tax because they don’t earn income sufficient to incur income tax either through lack of earnings or low earnings combined with standard tax deductions and exemptions.

Then, I cited what this group of displeased readers cited as the offending paragraph: “Social Security benefits are exempt from taxation, which accounts for another 22 percent of senior Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes. Earned income child credits and child care credits exempt another 15 percent of those who don’t pay federal income tax from the tax rolls.”

Readers didn’t just tell me I was wrong, they were angry about it. They wanted me to know in no uncertain terms that they paid taxes for their Social Security benefits. Most callers weren’t happy about that fact. The truth is that most Social Security recipients don’t pay income taxes.

Like it or not, the Internal Revenue Service says: “If Social Security benefits were your only income for 2010, your benefits are not taxable and you probably do not need to file a federal income tax return. If you received income from other sources, your benefits will not be taxed unless your modified adjusted gross income is more than the base amount for your filing status.”

Those base amounts are $32,000 for married couples filing jointly and $25,000 for single or head of household filers. The Social Security Administration says that about one-third of all Social Security recipients will pay some tax on their benefits — but only if they have other provisional income that is combined with their benefits to increase their adjusted gross income above the base amounts.

Now, gentle readers, there is my mea culpa. Some Social Security recipients - about one-third – do pay income taxes. Two-thirds don’t. But with the crush of Baby Boomer recipients poised to swell the ranks of Social Security recipients, one can also expect a corresponding increase in the number of non-income tax paying recipients.

Where does that leave us in the 2012 elections? Same conclusion as my last column: That the 2012 federal election debate should center on taxing and spending.

(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at 601-507-8004 or sidsalter@sidsalter.com)

Text Only

Opinion

Not your mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized. Now it comes to the house.
Let’s just say: It’s not my mother’s Ladies’ Home Journal. This month, right behind a feature called “A Country of People Who Never Stop Eating” is one called “Nice Girls Do Get Tattoos.”

March 29, 2013
Health care market needs oversight
By Gene Lyons/Syndicated columnist

Sometimes the best journalism explains what’s right under our noses. In Steven Brill’s exhaustive Time magazine cover article, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” it’s the staggeringly expensive, grotesquely inefficient and inhumane way Americans pay for medical care.

March 29, 2013
VA’s appalling failures not recent
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While recent national press attention to ongoing problems at Mississippi’s G.V. (Sonny) Montgomery Veterans Administration Medical Center in Jackson is welcome and needed, the failures of the overall VA service apparatus in Mississippi are not recent problems.
In short, former U.S. Rep. Sonny Montgomery — Mississippi’s “Mr. Veteran” and author of the modern G.I. Bill that bears his name — must be spinning in his grave. There have been significant failures and poor service to veterans documented by state and local media since 2008.

March 27, 2013
Dolley Madison politically savvy
By Cokie and Steven V. Roberts/Syndicated columnists

When Dolley Payne Madison became first lady in 1809, she instituted Wednesday evening gatherings at the White House where political rivals could meet and talk. They were called “squeezes” because so many people showed up and crowded the room. As Cokie wrote in her book “Ladies of Liberty": “All were welcome as long as they were appropriately dressed. And all went — skipping a Wednesday night might mean missing a vital piece of political information or being left out of a crucial deal.”

March 27, 2013
Mississippi isn’t immune from national college tuition trends
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist
Higher education in Mississippi has not been immune from national trends cited in a recent Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report which concludes that over the last five years, the global economic downturn and a “no new taxes” political climate have increasingly shifted the burden of higher education finance to students and parents at a time when enrollment is increasing and the percentage of state support is decreasing.

March 23, 2013
Right to vote not ‘racial entitlement
By Donna Brazile/Syndicated columnist
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County v. Holder — a challenge to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, specifically Section 5, which requires states and localities with a history of voting discrimination against racial and language minorities to get “pre-approved” by the federal government before changing how elections are conducted or voters are registered.

March 23, 2013
1st day of spring brings memories
By Wyatt Emmerich/Southside Sun

The first day of spring! My favorite month, April, is just around the corner. Now we just need one big gullywasher to get rid of the pine pollen.
Normally, spring gives me a strong sense of rebirth and renewal, but this spring I seem surrounded by moments crystallizing the passage of time.
It was a year ago, I walked up the porch to my mother’s home to box up her possessions following her funeral.

March 22, 2013
Soaking up in tiger paw-shaped hot tub
By Rheta Grimsely Johnson/Syndicated columnist

No springtime ritual was better at Auburn than sitting on hard rocks at a nearby state park to let cold water rush over your feet. You wore cut-off blue jeans and Dr. Scholl’s sandals, the unofficial uniform for coeds in the 1970s, and when you left, you felt ready to tackle tests, term papers and blind dates.

March 22, 2013
Medicaid or not, costs will be paid
By Sid Salter/Syndicated columnist

While the battle continues between state Republicans and other fiscal conservatives intent on focusing on the long-terms costs of Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats, health care advocates and state hospitals intent on focusing on the short-term benefits, the fact remains that one way or another, the costs of providing health care for the poor, the blind, the aged and the disabled will be paid by the taxpayers one way or another.

March 20, 2013
Multiculturalism is not rational
By Thomas Sowell/Syndicated columnist

Among the many irrational ideas about racial and ethnic groups that have polarized societies over the centuries and around the world, few have been more irrational and counterproductive than the current dogmas of multiculturalism.
Intellectuals who imagine that they are helping racial or ethnic groups that lag behind by redefining their lags out of existence with multicultural rhetoric are in fact leading them into a blind alley.

March 20, 2013
More Opinion Headlines

Opinion

Search Results

Readers angered by SS column

Site Map

Contact Us