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Hernando Today

Disability: Can I Apply At Age 69?

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By ADON TAFT

Life To The Fullest

Published: February 25, 2008

I like your question-and-answer column in the Hernando Today section of The Tampa Tribune and wonder if you can answer a question for me.
At the age of 3, I had polio in my legs. By the age of 55, I had struggled so much that I was completely worn out. So I quit early and took a teacher's partial retirement in California and, when I was 62 years old, took the reduced Social Security amount that I now receive at 69 years of age.
Meanwhile, I worked a lot of different jobs — nights, summers — to qualify for Social Security. Now, I am struggling with mobility in my legs.
I am embarrassed to say that I didn't know much about Social Security because I thought that you had to be hurt on the job to get disability benefits. Now I wonder if I should have gotten any disability with my Social Security. Could I now apply for disability at age 69? — F.H., Spring Hill

Don't feel badly. Few people know much about the various facets of Social Security. That's why we hope this column is helpful to those with questions. There are no disability payments after full retirement age. Any disability payments before that age automatically become retirement payments at that point. One replaces the other. It is not in addition to the other.

I am not clear on your recent answer on how they decide whether you will have to pay income tax on your Social Security benefit. Do the $25,000 or $35,000 income amounts mentioned to trigger the tax include your total Social Security benefit? In other words, If I get $20,000 from retirement funds, does my Social Security benefit put me over the lime?
In addition, I want to know why, if I am on Social Security disability, is it that Social Security retires you at the amount you are entitled to at 65 instead of giving you the choice of retiring at the maximum amount you would receive at age 70? — W.R., Bushnell

First of all, let me review the facts about how the income tax may be applied to your Social Security benefit. Whether there will be a tax or whether the tax will be on half your benefit or on 85 percent of your benefit depends on your base income. That base income includes your pension or almost any other income like interest on savings or investments — even the interest from tax free bonds — as well as half of your Social Security benefit.
Should an individual's base income amount to less than $25,000, he or she pays no income tax on the Social Security benefit. The amount is $32,000 for a married couple filing jointly. If the base income for an individual is between $25,000 and $34,000, he or she must pay income tax on half of the Social Security benefit. For couples, the tax on half of the benefit applies if their bse income is between $32,000 and $44,000.
For individuals with a base income above $34,000, 85 percent of the Social Security benefit is subject to income tax. For couples whose base income is above $44,000, the income tax applies to 85 percent of the benefit.
The reason that disability payments do not run to age 70 is that your future benefit is not growing because you have no wages on which you are paying the Social Security and Medicare tax. The disability benefit automatically becomes a retirement benefit at the full retirement age, which in your case was 65.

Adon Taft is a resident of Brooksville. E-mail him at adontaft@yahoo.com.

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