Social Security’s earnings limit climbed again this year, from $23,400 to $24,480, one of dozens of routine cost-of-living adjustments the agency makes every January without a headline. What has not moved since March is a Senate bill that would erase the rule behind that number entirely. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, joined by cosponsor Tommy Tuberville, introduced the Senior Citizens’ Freedom to Work Act of 2026 on March 24 to repeal the retirement earnings test, which docks Social Security checks for people who claim benefits before full retirement age and keep working. Five and a half months later, the bill has not left the Senate Finance Committee.
How the $24,480 earnings test still works
The earnings test applies only to people who are younger than full retirement age and are already collecting Social Security retirement or survivor benefits while holding a job or running a business. In 2026, the Social Security Administration withholds $1 in benefits for every $2 a worker earns above $24,480, the threshold that replaced last year’s $23,400 figure. In the agency’s own worked example, a beneficiary entitled to $9,600 a year who earns $33,400 in wages, $8,920 over the limit, would have $4,460 withheld and receive $5,140 in benefits for the year.
A separate, more forgiving limit applies during the calendar year a worker reaches full retirement age. The Social Security Administration counts only earnings from January through the month before that birthday against a higher $65,160 threshold, and it withholds $1 for every $3 earned above that amount rather than the steeper rate that applies to younger beneficiaries. Once a worker actually reaches full retirement age, the test disappears entirely, and the monthly check stops shrinking no matter how much the recipient earns afterward.
The withheld money is not gone for good. The agency’s planning materials describe the reduction as a deferral: once a beneficiary reaches full retirement age, Social Security recalculates the benefit and credits back the months in which payments were reduced or withheld for excess earnings. That recalculation is the mechanism Scott’s bill would make unnecessary for early claimants who keep working, since the bill targets the earnings test itself rather than the formula that eventually restores the withheld amount.
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What the Senior Citizens’ Freedom to Work Act would repeal
Scott introduced S. 4184 on March 24, 2026, with Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama as the lone cosponsor. The bill was read twice and referred to the Senate Finance Committee that same day, and its stated purpose is a single sentence: to amend Title II of the Social Security Act to repeal the retirement earnings test. Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina is carrying a companion version in the House, according to the Senate committee that announced the bill the following day.
Government Publishing Office records covering the introduced bill text list a wider set of sections it would amend than the headline number suggests, including provisions governing how wages are counted for Supplemental Security Income and three sections of the Railroad Retirement Act. A full repeal would therefore also change how earnings affect benefits paid to retired railroad workers under their own parallel earnings-limit system, a detail that has drawn little attention in coverage focused on the flagship Social Security figure.
Scott framed the repeal in blunt terms at a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing the day after he introduced the bill, telling witnesses the earnings test “takes away $1 of their benefits for every $2 in benefits they earn once their income hits $24,000 a year” and calling it a policy “passed during the Great Depression, specifically to push older Americans out of the workforce and free up more jobs for younger Americans.” He tied the bill to a demographic argument, telling the committee that workers 55 and older grew from 10% of the labor force in 1994 to 24% by 2022.
Why the repeal has stalled since March
Government Publishing Office records show only one version of the bill on file, the text introduced March 24, with no reported committee version, amendment, or floor text published in the months since. The Senate Finance Committee, which also handles tax policy, trade, and the financing of Medicare and Medicaid, has not scheduled a markup or hearing on S. 4184 itself, separate from the Aging Committee hearing where Scott announced it. A nearly identical bill from the prior Congress, the Senior Citizens’ Freedom to Work Act of 2023, was introduced in the House and never reached a vote before that Congress ended.
The stall reflects the same tension Social Security’s own materials describe. Because the earnings test withholds money now and repays it later through a recalculated benefit at full retirement age, eliminating it accelerates cash to working retirees rather than adding new lifetime dollars to the program. That distinction matters for how Congress scores the cost of repeal, since speeding up payments the government already owes still registers as higher near-term spending on paper, even though it does not change what a retiree collects over a full lifetime.
For now, the $24,480 figure keeps doing the job the earnings test was built to do: trimming checks for early claimants who keep earning above it, then quietly restoring the difference years later once they reach full retirement age. Scott’s bill would collapse that two-step process into one, letting workers keep the money immediately instead of waiting on a recalculation most beneficiaries never track closely. Until the Senate Finance Committee acts, that timing choice remains the government’s to make, five and a half months after the bill first reached committee with no next step scheduled.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
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