Posted on 11/13/2009 8:11:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Part of the story about who would feel the payroll tax on employers contained in the House-passed health care bill has gone missing. The media coverage I've seen and the Congressional rhetoric I've heard focuses on the small business lead by an entrepreneur who started the company. That's part of the story, but it isn't the whole story. The Joint Tax Committee's "technical explanation" makes clear that this is a tax on all employers, both for-profit and not-for-profit. (See the discussion that starts on page 31, under the opaque title "Responsibilities of Nonelecting Employers".)
A lot of non-profits do not offer health insurance. They are at risk of paying the 8% payroll tax. Data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) shows 36 percent of non-profits do not offer health insurance. With a universe of 534,554 non-profits in the MEPS survey, that says about 200,000 do not offer coverage.
I wish the media paid more attention to the plight of non-profits under the House bill. Those with payrolls over $750,000 that do not offer health insurance would be required to start offering coverage or pay an 8 percent payroll tax. I wonder about the non-profit that provided curbside recycling in the town where I used to live. Some on the city council wanted a "living wage" ordinance that would have required higher wages or health insurance. The non-profit said the prices it got for selling materials to recyclers meant it could not stay in business if it paid the living-wage rate or provided health insurance. Given the relatively low wages the recycler pays, the tax would be cheaper than offering coverage, but I don't know what it would do if it had to pay an 8 percent payroll tax. The message from the House bill is the curbside pickup recycler and other non-profits that can't fit insurance or the payroll tax into their budgets should not be in business.
— Hanns Kuttner is a visiting fellow at Hudson Institute.
The Marxists will eliminate charities. Why do we need them when the all powerful Government will take care of everyone?
Wow! Mike Rogers nails it!
Amazing, isn't it?
So, matter of fact. How can ANYONE not see how sound his reasoning is?
bttt!
They don’t want a voice of reason. This is nothing more than a new tax, whether it be gotten from additional mandated payroll taxes or straight from individuals. Nothing more than a tax. The federal budget is unsustainable. They want their hands on the billions if not trillions of dollars from these so called premiums and then dole out aspirins when someone get seriously sick.
This is not the country my Father and Grandparents fought for.
I worry for my daughter.
we shall all bow down to the great god of secularism.
Any religious based private charity - hospitals, social service agencies etc. - needs to be afraid-—that is unless they are mohamedan.
But many of them have already been corrupted by taking in vast amounts of government money - so now is the time to pay the obama piper.
As do I.
The Confederate States were right.
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