Research & Data

Benefora publishes original datasets built from public IRS and Social Security Administration records. Each one ships with a full methodology, a downloadable CSV under an open license, and a citation block. Journalists, researchers, and advisors are welcome to use the numbers with attribution.

Dataset · 3,143 counties · Tax year 2023

The Benefora Social Security Tax Bite Index

How much of each county's Social Security income becomes federally taxable, from IRS county tax-return data joined to SSA county benefit records. Nationally, 37.2% of Social Security dollars were reported as taxable income in tax year 2023; the county range runs from 8.9% to 62.6%.

How to use this data

Every dataset is released under CC BY 4.0. Cite “Benefora” and link to the dataset page. For questions about methodology or for a custom cut of the data for a story, write to [email protected].