While President Trump seems intent on cutting benefits Social Security still seems to be going strong and will continue to distribute payments for the month of May soon enough. Since the Social Security Administration (SSA) is tasked with delivering these benefits to those who qualify for them, it is important to keep up to date with any changes that may affect your payments.
While most people thing of just retirement benefits when talking about Social Security, the SSA distributes five different types of benefits, Disability, Survivor, Family, Retirement and Supplemental Security Income (SSI), all of which amount to over 70 million American families receiving payments every month.
Since that is a big number of people that depend on benefits, most to make ends meet, the SSA implements some changes at the beginning of every year to ensure that the program keeps up with the times and that benefits are not left behind by things like rising inflation or the increase in life expectancy.
The changes that Social Security underwent at the beginning of 2025
The most important change that happened in January is the same one that happens every year, which is the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) for all benefits that he state distributes (not just Social Security but also Veteran benefits). All state benefits are called fixed income because unlike a salary paid by an employer they cannot change once they have been assigned and claimed by the beneficiary. The benefit you start with (except for SSI which can increase until a set maximum depending on the circumstances) is the base that will serve to calculate any COLA increases.
The COLA increases do make payments higher, but this is only to keep up with inflation and this means that they will just help offset rising living expenses, not increase payments overall. The COLA is calculated using the average for the inflation data of the months of July, August and September and in 2025 the increase was set at 2.5%. This is automatically applied to all benefits in their first check in January, but for those that have not noticed it is not a surprise given how much the cost of living has risen and how small the increase is.
Another change, although this one has to do with workers that have to pay taxes on their income is that the maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax has increased, from $160,200 in 2024 to $176,100 for 2025. Anything over that number will continue to be untaxed for Social Security purposes. The reasoning is that, since there is a cap on how much you can earn in benefits, there should also be a cap on how much you should pay in taxes to receive said benefits. After all, Social Security is not an infinitely scalable program.
One thing that has not changed just yet but is under review and might pass during the year is the increase in the full retirement age. The discussion centers around continuing to rise retirement age gradually until it reaches 68 or even 70 years old, as there has been an increase in life expectancy and the program was never meant to support payments for this long.
The one thing that has not changed and it is not anticipated to is the dates in which the benefits are distributed:
- May 1 – For those receiving SSI payments.
- May 3 – For those who started claiming benefits prior to May 1997
- May 7 – for those born between the 1st and 10th of every month
- May 14 – for those born between the 11th and 20th of every month
- May 21 – for those born between the 21st and 31st of every month