A Social Security email praised Trump’s tax bill—but experts say it lied

Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” has a lot of moving parts, but one thing it won’t do is end taxes on Social Security benefits, as he has claimed.

The bill, which passed last week, slashes Medicaid, food stamps and clean energy incentives to pay for a huge package of Republican priorities, including staffing up ICE and extending tax cuts from Trump’s first term. It also makes some changes to Social Security, but the truth is more complex than what Trump is touting. 

In a press release last week, the White House declared that “No tax on social security is a reality” under the new bill. “Promises made, promises kept,” the White House wrote.

To further muddy the waters, the Social Security Administration praised the Republican mega-bill in a mass email blast rife with misleading claims to more than 60 million Americans.

 “For nearly 90 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for older Americans,” Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, a former fintech CEO appointed by Trump to lead the agency, wrote. In the email, the agency claimed the new bill “eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries” and described it as a “historic step forward for America’s seniors.”

“The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy,” the email stated.

The problem? The bill doesn’t actually change the tax code to end taxes for Social Security benefits. And you wouldn’t know it from the grand language in the email, but the tax relief it does provide comes with an expiration date that’s just a few years away.

For a workhorse agency that generally stays in its lane and doesn’t wade directly into political discussions, the Social Security Administration email’s tone was enough to raise eyebrows among some recipients. On top of that, the departure from communication norms also set off alarms for some seniors who are wary of being targeted by phishing schemes after years of being warned about exactly that. 

What the bill actually does

While it doesn’t actually eliminate federal income taxes on Social Security benefits, the bill does add a new, temporary bonus tax deduction that many seniors over 65 can claim. It offers single filers with an income below $75,000 an additional $6,000 deduction or couples making less than $150,000 a $12,000 deduction. The deduction phases out incrementally above those levels and cuts off above $175,000 for single filers and $250,000 for couples. The new senior bonus deduction will only be in effect from tax years 2025 to 2028, unless Congress intervenes to extend it.

The temporary bonus deduction can reduce overall income tax for some seniors, but it is not a direct tax cut on Social Security benefits, nor will it apply to everyone who receives Social Security. The new deduction won’t apply to recipients between the ages of 62 and 64 — around 5% of people who receive Social Security — nor will it move the needle for high earners or Social Security recipients with an income too low to be taxed to begin with.

The new bonus deduction is expected to mostly affect middle and upper middle income households that fall within its income parameters. In the short term, fewer Social Security recipients will owe taxes on their benefits, though more than 60% of them already didn’t owe taxes on those benefits prior to the bill according to analysis from the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Short term thinking

The new temporary deduction for seniors will give some households a tax reprieve, but like the Big Beautiful Bill’s other core achievements, those tax perks may come at a steep cost.

Taxes to Social Security were first implemented in 1983 to improve the federal benefit program’s long term health. That revenue is specifically earmarked for trusts that benefit Medicare and Social Security, which means any reduction to the tax revenue generated by those taxes takes a bite out of the program itself. 

The Social Security program is a lifeline for retirement-age Americans, but those benefits as we know them are hurtling toward extinction. Unless a dramatic intervention succeeds, millions of retirees expected to see their benefits shrinking by 2033. But with Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill signed into law, that looming insolvency date just inched one year closer, according to new analysis.