$147,000

The Social Security program is funded by a payroll tax on existing workers. Sill, top earners don’t have to pay income tax. The SSA releases its “wage base” amount yearly.

What exactly does that mean? Well, “wage base” is the maximum amount of earned income that is taxable for the SSA Trust Fund. This means that employees who earn more than this established amount can refuse to pay any taxes. And most of them do that.

For 2022, the wage base is $147,000, remarkably bumping up from 2021’s $142,800.

Just like in the case of COLA, the wage base limit depends on annual revision, the inflation rate included.