Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wis., recently introduced the Save Our Social Security (S.O.S.) Act, which includes some practicable and commonsense solutions such as raising the retirement age and using a more accurate inflation measure.



Unfortunately, the S.O.S. Act’s faults significantly outweigh its merits.
The bill’s most harmful provision is a significant increase in Social Security’s payroll tax cap. Currently, Social Security’s 12.4 percent tax only applies to the first $118,500 of workers’ earnings (the cap is adjusted upward with wage growth each year). The S.O.S. Act would increase that level to $308,750 by 2021, and index it thereafter to tax 90 percent of all wage income. For top earners, that’s almost a $22,000 per year tax increase in 2021.
While Social Security’s trust fund will receive a significant boost from these additional taxes, federal, as well as state and local, tax revenues will decline. That’s because employers will reduce employees’ taxable wages in response to having to pay higher payroll taxes.