Social security is imposed on salary, business and earned income because its benefits are loosely based on the taxes paid in. If the earnings cap is lifted, that fiction is destroyed and social security becomes just another welfare program. As a country we need to stop the high tax rates on earned income relative to the extremely low rates on unearned income. One way to do would be to impose the medicare tax, which bears no link to earned income, on both earned and unearned income. The second way would be to lift the earnings cap on the employee's portion of the social security tax, but allow those payments to be credited against the income tax. This would give an additional tax break to workers, recognize that social security has an income supplementation purpose that should be paid from general tax funds but not allow these taxes to be spent outside social security. The employer portion would remain capped and tied to social security benefits. If the earnings cap is lifted, this 15.3% tax would be imposed on top of the 35% federal income tax on the income of family business owners. These owners would have to pay almost 150% of the tax their public company competitors would pay. If the business owner invested in a public company competitor, they would be taxed at only 15% on their profits, but if they invested in their own businesses they would pay about three times as much in tax on the profits.