Josh Scandlen Podcast

In 1983, and again in 1993, provisions were made to the tax code to allow for the taxation of Social Security benefits.  If your income was above a certain provision some of your benefits were taxed. Thus the term “provisional income” came to describe how much of your Social Security benefits are taxed.  Oddly, go to SSA.gov and type “provisional income” into the search button and see what you come up with; Nothing.  Go to IRS.gov and type in “provisional income”. Again, nothing.  Now, don’t get me wrong, both of these sites have tons of information on how benefits are taxed.  Here’s the IRS for example:  a quick way to find out if a taxpayer must pay taxes on their Social Security benefits: Add one-half of the Social Security income to all other income, including tax-exempt interest. Then compare that amount to the base amount for their filing status. If the total is more than the base amount, some of their benefits may be taxable. Base Amounts. The three base amounts are: