It’s hard for most of us to imagine what life as a billionaire is like. With that much money, there’s no need to worry about how you’ll pay for a medical procedure or whether you’ll have enough money to afford basic living expenses. For some, their whole life is like a fancy retirement where they can spend their time as they please.
When someone’s that wealthy, they don’t need their Social Security checks in the same way an average retiree would. But the law is pretty clear that they can claim them — under certain conditions.
Image source: Getty Images.
Qualifying for Social Security retirement benefits is easier than you’d think
Becoming eligible for Social Security retirement benefits is actually pretty easy. You only need 40 work credits, where one credit is defined as $1,810 in earnings that you pay Social Security payroll taxes on in 2025. You can earn a maximum of four credits per year, which means it typically takes 10 years of work to get to 40 credits. Anyone who meets that criterion — including billionaires — can claim Social Security retirement benefits at any point after they turn 62.
But that doesn’t mean that billionaires are raking in millions of dollars in annual benefits while Social Security itself steadily depletes its trust funds. There are limits to how large your benefit can be.
In 2025, you only pay Social Security payroll taxes on the first $176,100 you earn. This ceiling was lower in past years. Any money over this amount doesn’t count toward your future benefit because you’re not paying Social Security taxes on it. For most billionaires, $176,100 is a drop in the bucket, which means their maximum benefit is also pretty small compared to the monthly income they’re used to.
The maximum Social Security benefit in 2025 is $5,108 per month. That adds up to about $61,300 per year. For most of us, that would be life-changing money in retirement. But for billionaires, it probably seems like pocket change.
Just because billionaires can collect Social Security doesn’t mean they do
It’s worth noting that not all billionaires who are eligible to collect Social Security do so. For example, President Donald Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020 indicate that he collected no Social Security benefits during that time despite being old enough and having a qualifying work history that would have allowed him to do so. It’s not clear if he currently collects Social Security benefits as his more recent tax returns haven’t been made public.
It’s ultimately a judgment call that each billionaire has to make on their own. Since most don’t publicize their tax returns, it’s not always easy to know which receive checks and which don’t.
Those who decide to claim Social Security benefits may not actually get to keep as much as you’d expect, though, due to Social Security benefit taxes. Single adults with provisional incomes — defined as adjusted gross incomes (AGI) plus nontaxable interest from municipal bonds and half their annual Social Security benefit exceeding $34,000, and married couples with provisional incomes exceeding $44,000, can owe ordinary income taxes on up to 85% of their benefit.
For example, if we have a billionaire earning a $5,108 monthly benefit in 2025 who falls in the 37% income tax bracket, then the IRS would tax 85% of their annual benefit — $52,102 — at 37%, meaning they’d give $19,278 of that money back to the government, leaving them with just over $42,000 to keep.
Some still feel it’s unfair that billionaires pay so little into the program, and some have proposed increasing or eliminating the cap on Social Security payroll taxes to force them to pay more. This could be a change we see in the future. If enacted, it may lead to larger Social Security benefits for billionaires depending on how the government decides to structure the change. For the time being, the current system remains, capping billionaires’ benefits but also requiring them to contribute little to Social Security.