Social Security Taxes

• Liz Pulliam Weston, personal finance columnist for MSN Money and author of "Easy Money: How to Simplify Your Finances and Get What You Want Out of Life," explains that money collected from social security taxes are directly redistributed as benefits while the surplus is held in the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds (OASDI). Weston notes that in 2007, the total amount in the trust fund was more than $2 trillion.
  
  

Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust

• According to the annual 2010 "Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds," $689 billion was received by tax revenues and $118 billion was received via interest earnings.
  
  

Fund Contributions

• More than 150 million people paid into the fund through their payroll taxes. The 2010 annual report indicated that 83 percent of the contributions to the funds were received from taxes paid by employees, employers and the self-employed.