Retirement tax questions
Dependent upon your other income, up to 85% of your social security can become taxable. TurboTax will include the amount of your social security as part of your total income, but that does not mean you are being taxed on it. You have to look at your tax return to determine how much of your social security income is actually being taxed.
Your total Social Security amount will be listed on line 6a, but the amount on line 6b is the amount being taxed.
You can check to be sure that is what is happening by viewing your Tax Summary. Here is how to do that:
- Log in to your tax return
- Click on Tax Tools on the left side of the screen (you may need to click on Continue in the center first).
- Click on Tools.
- In the box that pops up in the center, click on View Tax Summary.
You will see below how to figure if you have taxable social security or you can visit IRS.gov and use the Interactive Tax Assistant tool.
Tax Formula. Here’s 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:
$25,000 – if taxpayers are single, head of household, qualifying widow or widower with a dependent child or married filing separately and lived apart from their spouse for all of the tax year
$35,000 – if they are married filing jointly
$0 – if they are married filing separately and lived with their spouse at any time during the year
