# The Social Security tax fight nobody can dodge > Benefit cuts land in six years, and taxing high earners is suddenly the one fix both parties will say out loud. - Title: The Social Security tax fight nobody can dodge · CNBC - Summary: Benefit cuts land in six years, and taxing high earners is suddenly the one fix both parties will say out loud. Scrapping the payroll tax cap closes most of… - Keywords: social security, payroll tax, retirement, tax policy, congress, business, finance, Social, Security, tax, fight, nobody - Source: CNBC — https://cnbc.com/2026/09/13/social-security-payroll-tax-cap.html - Author: Lorie Konish - Published: 2026-09-13T13:30:01+00:00 - Read time: 2 min - Topics: social security, payroll tax, retirement, tax policy, congress, business, finance ## Six years to a cut Social Security's retirement trust fund can only pay 78% of scheduled benefits starting in the fourth quarter of 2032 unless Congress acts. That is about six years out. ## Republicans join in Raising taxes on high earners used to be a Democrat-only pitch. Sen. Bernie Moreno co-wrote a New York Times op-ed with Sen. Elizabeth Warren backing a lift of the payroll tax cap. > common-sense solution ## More on the record Reps. Tom Cole and Lloyd Smucker, both Republicans, each said in separate interviews they would consider raising payroll taxes to help fund the program. ## Where the cap sits In 2026, workers pay Social Security payroll tax on earnings up to $184,500. The highest paid stop contributing partway through the year. ## A $30 trillion hole The trustees put the program's 75-year shortfall at nearly $30 trillion in their June report, up from roughly $25 trillion a year earlier. ## What scrapping it buys Eliminating the cap entirely covers 67% of the 75-year solvency gap, the Roosevelt Institute found. Pair it with higher benefits and the number drops to 48%. ## The softer version Permanently setting the taxable maximum at 90% of earnings closes only 28% of the gap, or 22% if monthly checks also rise. ## What voters picked In a 2024 survey of 2,243 adults, the top choice was taxing earnings above $400,000. Nearly as popular: raising the payroll tax rate to 7.2% from 6.2% for workers and employers. ## A small group pays About 6% of workers earn above the cap in a given year, said Tyler Bond of the National Academy of Social Insurance. Only 20% ever clear it at any point in a career. > We're talking about a fairly small segment of the workforce ## Only three levers Fixing the gap means tax increases, benefit cuts, or both. Raising the retirement age, often pitched as neutral, counts as a cut. > It's really hard to just ignore the fact that scrapping the cap closes so much of the funding gap ## The biggest hike since 1982 The Tax Foundation calls uncapping the tax a 12.4-percentage-point hike on currently exempt income. Its model says a $346,000 cap in 2027 would cost nearly 900,000 jobs and 0.7% of GDP. > We have just not experienced that in the modern economy ## Then the well runs dry Andrew Biggs of AEI warns a hike this size leaves Washington tapped out. Medicare's hospital fund may empty in 2033, and the national debt just passed $40 trillion. > It's a huge tax increase on a very small number of people ## The link that breaks California's top marginal rate would reach 63%, said Jessica Riedl of the Tax Policy Center. And if bigger contributions buy no bigger checks, the tie between paying in and getting back snaps. > There'd be no room to tax the rich for anything else ## Key takeaway Scrapping the payroll tax cap closes most of Social Security's gap in one move, but it spends the political room for taxing the rich on a single program.