Jan 21 2009
Seniors Included in Obama Plans
The new Obama Administration has posted an Agenda on the White House.gov website.
The new President has already articulated many of his plans for the future, but the website offers more details on about two dozen of the most important issues.
There seems to be something for everyone, seniors included. The Obama plan for the tax structure would eliminate Federal Income Taxes for senior citizens with incomes are under $50,000 per year.
This would indeed provide some tax relief to seniors, who have recently found themselves continuing to pay taxes on the Social Security benefits that they assumed would not be taxed due to anticipated lower income bracket by the time social security benefits would be drawn upon.
Times have changed recently, and seniors often are supplementing their social security with part-time jobs; again, facing income taxes on this money, and often pushing themselves into a higher tax bracket. Not a happy situation, as most of the seniors I know are hard-pressed to make ends meet.
Of course, the President’s plans have yet to be introduced in Congress; and the details and definitions are not explained on the web site (there is still an immense amount of work to be done). I assume the $50,000 number refers to gross income. I don’t know how the term “senior citizen” will be defined, age-wise. It could be 65 or 70; it could be based on whether or not one is drawing social security benefits, or could be limited when only one spouse qualifies.
At any rate, I do think that tax relief in one form or another will be reaching us this tax year, 2009, and probably some form of tax structure revamping that will benefit the middle class as well and senior citizens for the next few years, particularly in light of the difficult economic times we all face.
