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Though we didn’t drive off the fiscal cliff, most people were shocked to find this week that their first paycheck of 2013 is smaller than they expected.
What’s behind this nasty surprise? The payroll tax, which the government lowered in 2010 to stimulate the economy and which funds Social Security, jumped back up to 6.2% because our government let the payroll tax break expire.
How much will this hurt? Well, a person who earns $50,000 a year will lose about $1,000 of that – which is significant if you’re just scraping by, living paycheck to paycheck.
Sadly, if our government doesn’t get its act together, many of us will never see the money we’ve been putting into the Social Security system all these years anyway.
