Can federal taxes be withheld from monthly Social Security checks/payments?
Yes, you can request to have federal taxes withheld from your SS payments.
Request to withhold taxes
Submit a request to pay taxes on your Social Security benefit throughout the year instead of paying a large bill at tax time. - SOURCE
Just a note, as I’m sure you know, that roughly the first 25-32k of SS is not taxed at the Federal level, depending on filing status and other income.
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I don’t think you are reading that quite correctly. It’s not that the first $25K-$32K of SS isn’t taxable - it’s that if your “combined income” (which only includes half of your SS benefits) is less than those numbers , then none of your SS is taxable Let’s say my husband and I each get $2500/month in Social Security benefits. That’s $60K a year. If our combined income is over $44K (which it absolutely will be) , then 85% of our SS is taxable, which means $51K of our SS income will be taxed.
You are certainly likely to be more corrector than I. This tax year will be the first time I’ll file with no earned income. I’ve used online calculators to estimate my ultimate burden, but didn’t look under the hood.
The Bogleheads have an excellent page on taxes on SS.
It’s scary how messed up the formula is. Trying to work out backwards your options for minimizing the tax is a real chore. And for single folk in a modest income range the marginal tax rate is over 40%.
My recollection is that you are limited to three choices: zero, 10%, 25%.
My accountant suggested I have 10% withheld as long as I continue working.
I have 12% withheld.
To be fair that 40% marginal rate only applies over a relatively small window from $47k-$52k in taxable income. After that it is back to a 22% marginal rate.
There are other weird little blips in the marginal rate for married couples as well, depending on where the non-SSI income comes from.
ISTR that when I started drawing SS, there were 3 non-zero choices. But the current W-4V
(Form W-4V (Rev. February 2018) (irs.gov)), has boxes for 7%, 10%, 12%, and 22%.