My goal on the reading section of the SAT is a 600. How many questions can I skip without falling short of my target score?
Technically, you can skip 21 questions on the current SAT reading section (answer 46 out of 67 questions) and still get a 600. Remember that this only holds true if you get all the questions right that you do answer. You should also keep in mind that the SAT is changing to a new format starting in March of 2016.
There is no guessing penalty on the new SAT (skipping a question and answering it incorrectly are indistinguishable score-wise), and there are only 52 reading questions. Reading and writing are combined into one section out of 800 with 96 questions total, so the problem becomes more complex. It's not easy to say how many reading questions you'll be able to skip on the new SAT without also knowing your skill level on the writing section. If you were to answer all the writing questions correctly, you could skip up to 30 reading questions and still end up with a 600. This is judging by the raw-to-final score conversion on the old SAT, however, so it's possible that the curve for the new test will end up working slightly differently.