I plan on retiring later this your and going on Social Security, and according to this pdf from the government I can still earn up to $17, 640 without having money deducted from my monthly Social Security check…but I don’t know if that is supposed to be gross, or net. Help?
Pretty sure it would be gross income. They use that term in the pdf you linked
But the second sentence refers to net earnings, thus the confusion.
gross income.
and the limit applies only if you are less than 66 years old.
There are special rules if this is your first year in SS.
Those rules help people who don’t retire on their birthday and earn some pre-retirement income the year they retire. They also make it more complicated for anyone who earns income during that first year of retirement.
enjoy retirement!
Less than 66(born in September of '57), and I was thinking of waiting until the end of the year just to decomplicate matters.
That second sentence is about the self-employed - “net earnings from self-employment” means what’s left over after subtracting business expenses from gross income ( which is gross revenue minus the costs of goods sold). It’s not the same as gross income for a wage-earner.
I realize my situation is different, but I’m betting its most certainly gross. I’m receiving Social Security Disability and I’m allowed to earn up to $1220 per month without it affecting my disability benefit. That amount is gross earnings.
It’s actually slightly more complicated than that. The term “net earnings from self-employment” is the amount of your profit that your income tax is based on, which is the equivalent wage of a wage-earner, which is slightly less than the business’s profit. Because the businessperson pays both halves of the SS/Med payroll tax as self-employment tax, one-half of their self-employment tax is a deduction in computing “net earnings from self-employment”, on which basis any Social Security benefits would be reduced.
Last year we theoretically had a fairly large income, but it was all from investment earnings and capital gains, and our SS was not affected. My wife is a writer, but her income after expenses is fairly small.
People getting SS while working are a different story.