"How long do you have to contribute into Social Security to become eligible to draw it out? What other programs draw money from Social Security?"

Anyone born in 1929 or later needs to have worked for 10 years in order to be eligible for retirement benefits through Social Security.

In order to qualify for benefits, a person must have earned 40 credits. A beneficiary earns one credit for every $1,120 of earnings, up to a maximum of four credits per year. Thus, a person qualifies to receive benefits if they have worked for ten years and made more than $4,500 a year.

The administration keeps track of your credits even when you change jobs or are out of work, and they accrue over the course of your working life. There are special rules for certain kinds of work.

The Social Security trust fund is actually two separate trust funds, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) trust funds.

Disability insurance is available to those who are unable to work due to “total disability.” The Social Security Administration determines whether an applicant meets the requirements of being unable to work as he or she did before and unable to adjust to other work because of a medical condition. The program does not cover “short-term” disability.

Eligibility for disability benefits also depends on how old a person is when he or she becomes disabled. If a person becomes disabled before age 24, he generally needs to have worked for one and a half years, earning six credits, in the three years before becoming disabled in order to qualify for benefits. There is a shifting scale for older workers.

A smaller percentage of the payroll taxes collected for Social Security are paid into the DI trust fund than the OASI trust fund. About one dollar of every seven brought in by the payroll taxes goes into disability insurance.

Perhaps as a result, according to the 2010 annual report on the health of the Social Security trust funds, the DI trust fund is projected to be exhausted as early as 2018. The OASI trust fund, on the other hand, is expected to be exhausted in 2037, though payments have already begun to exceed tax income.

"How many individuals, who have never paid one cent into the Social Security Fund, are receiving checks?"

If you have never paid a cent into Social Security, you cannot collect a check, except in some rare cases, such as survivor’s benefits.

If a person who has worked and paid Social Security taxes passes away, certain members of the family may receive benefits. Again, eligibility for the benefits depends on how many years the deceased had worked and how old he or she was.

Widows or widowers may receive full benefits at full retirement age or reduced benefits. Disabled widows or widowers may receive benefits as early as age 50 or if he or she is the caretaker of a deceased beneficiary’s minor child. There are several other such allowances.

According to the Congressional Research Service, as of December 2009, 52.2 million people received Social Security benefits. 64 percent of those beneficiaries were retired workers, 15 percent were disabled workers and 21 percent were survivors or the spouses and children of retired or disabled workers.

“Is Social Security funded entirely from payroll taxes? If so, is there a maximum income beyond which no payroll tax is deducted?”

Social Security is indeed funded entirely through payroll taxes paid by employers and employees, with the self-employed paying an equivalent of the combined employer and employee tax rates.

The program limits the amount of earnings subject to taxation for a given year. The current “taxable maximum,” beyond which no payroll tax is deducted, is $106,800. If a person earns more than that, they will only pay the tax on that amount.

According to the Social Security Administration, this limit generally increases when there is a rise in the national average wage index, a calculation also used to compute a person’s retirement benefit.

— Frances Symes, Congress.org

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