What is a Social Security Offset and How Does it Work?

As you probably know, pastors have to pay both the employee and employer portions of Social Security and Medicare taxes as if they were self-employed. Those Social Security and Medicare taxes are also called SECA taxes, which is a lot faster to type so that’s what I’m going to call them from here on out. Some churches feel kind of bad that their pastors have to pay twice as much in SECA taxes than any other employee in the US. Since they aren’t allowed to pay SECA for their pastors, they instead pay them a little extra to cover the cost of the tax. That extra pay is called a SECA offset or Social Security offset. 

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