I earned $40509 and paid $3202 fed tax and $2511 Social Security and yet only am getting $221 back? last year i only worked from Aug to Jan and got over $1100 back, why?

Without examining your tax return, it is very difficult to give you a precise answer.

Your tax refund is not at all proportional to your income. It depends on your income, your deductions and other tax credits, your tax liability and the amount of tax withheld.

The tax withholding tables are designed so that you pay enough tax as you earn so that your refund or your tax due is as close to 0 as possible. In fact, if you have a large refund at tax time, this means that too much has been withheld from your paychecks during the year.

For a single person, with no dependents...that looks exactly right.  (I ran a test tax return)

Earn more..pay more taxes.

The SS is immaterial...only the Income taxes withheld matter.

With only a couple months of earnings last year, either:

1)  Your withholding may have been set  too high...so bigger refund

or, maybe more likely:

2)  with the lower income last year, you may have been eligible for some EIC (Earned Income Credits...i.e. freemoney) that your higher income made you ineligible for this year.

Q. I earned $40509 and paid $3202 fed tax and $2511 Social Security and yet only am getting $221 back?

A. That is the correct amount for a single person with no dependents.

Q. Last year I only worked from Aug to Jan and got over $1100 back, why?

A.  It's a mistake to compare only the amount you're getting back to last year. You have to compare all the numbers. Lay last year's form 1040 next to this year and do a line by line comparison. 

The social security withholding is (almost) never refunded.