Final Rules issued by the IRS
Uncle Sams strong arm, the Internal Revenue Service issued final rules for the individual mandate of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, one of the most talked about factors of the United States law set to go into effect next year, 2014.
One of the major tenants of Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is the federal mandate that ALL, YES ALL individuals must carry some minimum health insurance or pay a tax.
The brand new system aims to provide insurance through State marketplaces and subsidies for tens of millions of Americans.
We shall see just how this plays out.
If you chose not to carry Insurance
If individuals choose not to carry insurance, they are subject to:
- a penalty, starting at $95 per person per year or
- 1 percent of income in 2014, whichever is greater, and
- eventually reaching $695 per person or 2.5 percent of income by 2016.
The Internal Revenue Service which is administering parts of the law involving revenue collection, released the final rules spelling out the details of what constitutes minimum essential coverage, and how individuals are responsible for spouses, children and other dependents, among other topics.
The Employers Mandate
The individual mandate is distinct from the employer mandate, which imposes a fee on most large employers that do not offer a minimum level of coverage.
Washington delayed that provision, putting off the effective date until 2015.
Promoters of the new law say that, unlike the employer mandate, the individual mandate is essential to ensure enough individuals are enrolled in the system to allow the online marketplaces to function.Once again we will see just how this plays out.
The new guidelines and rules offered good news to employees getting health coverage through a union-sponsored plan. They seem to help clear up that these employees will not be penalized.
The IRS rules also said “employees getting healthcare coverage from a temporary staffing agency are safe from penalties.”
After reviewing the voluminous material, one must wonder how IRS is going to go ahead and force the debt for those who cannot pay for insurance.
How much time and effort is the federal government going to spend on the millions of taxpayers who cannot afford to pay.
The IRS collection division is overloaded with work as over 1.1 million taxpayers owing back tax debt of $56 billion sits in a federal queue because there are no personnel to collect these larger back debt taxes case.
Lets be realistic, is the IRS really got to be looking for taxpayers who’ll less than $1500 when billions of other dollars that are easier to collect just sitting there.
The IRS will probably collect the money through tax refunds going back to taxpayers.
I think not.
