Original Blog Entry: Social Security Tax: It's not your money

time*treat — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 22:56:44 GMT

If you've ever wondered why the powers-that-be are not too worried about Soc. Sec, here's why...

Americans have no legal claim on the money Uncle Sam theoretically salts away for their golden years. In the case of Flemming v. Nestor, Bulgarian* immigrant Ephram Nestor was deported in 1956 for being a Communist in the 1930s. After Congress prohibited Social Security benefits for deportees in 1954, Nestor sued. He claimed title to his FICA tax payments between 1936 and 1955. The Supreme Court disagreed. As it ruled, 'To engraft upon the Social Security system a concept of 'accrued property rights' would deprive it of the flexibility and boldness in adjustment to ever-changing conditions which it demands.'

This decision reflected the Court's precedent in Helvering v. Davis. In 1937, it ruled that Social Security taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like any other internal revenue generally, and are not earmarked in any way.

It was doubtless out of an awareness of the need for such flexibility that Congress included in the original [Social Security] Act, and has since retained, a clause expressly reserving to it '[t]he right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision' of the Act. 1104, 49 Stat. 648, 42 U.S.C. 1304. That provision makes express what is implicit in the institutional needs of the program.

Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960)

easy reading sources:

http://www.urban.org/publications/310232.html

http://www.socialsecurity.org/daily/06-22-99.html

*(No actual Bulgarians were harmed in the making of this blog entry)

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