Forget 'Keep Your Plan' And The Website, #Obamacare Taxes Are Worse http://t.co/eiXSfTMsPG via @forbes
— U.S. Citizen Abroad (@USCitizenAbroad) January 7, 2014
Forget for a moment that the Affordable Heath Act resulted in the confiscation of the health plans of some individuals. That is only of the lies of Obamacare.
You will recall that the Supreme Court of the United States upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare on the basis that it was a tax! In fact Obamacare contains hidden taxes (penalties for failure to comply) and many visible taxes.
Robert Wood describes what a massive tax The Affordable Health Act AKA Obamacare really is:
As with many tax laws–and on many fundamental levels, the Affordable Care Act is a tax law–determining exactly where the tax burden falls isn’t always clear. One of the new taxes funds the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). (I wish this institute included “affordable” for it makes a better acronym.) This 2% levy on health plans is expected to collect a cool $8 billion this year alone.
By 2018, annual receipts from the little 2% climb to $14.3 billion. Over a decade, it reaps over $100 billion. Here comes the zinger. Self-insured employers (public companies and 4 of every 5 employers with over 500 employees) don’t have to pay it, according to IRS rules. Oh, but the health plans pay it, right?
That is the Obama administration’s official position. In fact, though, as is plainly no surprise, the insurers pass it along to those who pay the premiums. And that means small employers and people who buy their own insurance have to pay. This is one of the worst features of the new law.
The little guy–small business and the self-employed–have to pay. Kaiser Health News said the new taxes end up on customer bills. One customer’s bill went up by $23.14 a month, or $277.68 annually, for the tax. It meant the person’s monthly premium rose from $322.26 to $345.40.
It continues to be unclear how Obamacare will affect Americans abroad.
This article and the comments are well worth a read.
Note that Question 12 of the Obamacare FAQs has been updated to include bona fide foreign residents as being exempted from Obamacare penalties. The FAQ previously only focused on physical presence and many US persons abroad feared it limited the time they could visit the US. We discussed this above. Do you wonder if people in the IRS read Brock posts?
http://www.irs.gov/uac/Questions-and-Answers-on-the-Individual-Shared-Responsibility-Provision
Good catch, Not That Lisa! To your question, they would be foolish not to be reading here.
Good news, Not that Lisa! (lord knows we can use some). ACA (American Citizens Abroad) may have also played a hand in this ACA (Affordable Care Act) exemption.
I would bet they mentioned it to interested parties. I raised the issue with them. ACA just informed me that they are writing a letter on Obamacare and planned to put this issue in it, but saw that it had recently been addressed.
I hope ACA can get some movement on the NIIT tax? That technicality in the code ensures double taxation in many instances. An illustrative example is that the capital gains tax in Sweden Is 30%. If a US Person in Sweden sells their home and pays 30% tax, they will generate foreign tax credits. However a technicality in the code does not allow a foreign tax credit to be applied to the NIIT. This means that even though the foreign tax credits exist, this US person will be paying a total of 33.8% in tax. It’s just another case of double taxation that homelanders who do not live it have a hard time understanding.
@NotthatLisa…
Did you see this on NIIT by Virginia?
http://bit.ly/1dpDjIH
I don’t know if they could have designed anything more complicated. I am always amazed how they turn these things into pretzels with endless twists and loops.
and finally…
So wit and tears on ObamaCare…
http://bit.ly/1fKQvdW
I especially liked this comment…
trahison des clercs means “a compromise of intellectual integrity by members of an intelligentsia.”
Which is a pretty good description of leftists who are twisting themselves into pretzels trying to rationalize that joblessness and government dependency are good things.