Posted on 04/02/2013 4:29:14 PM PDT by grundle
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who take advantage of government subsidies to help buy health insurance next year could get stung by surprise tax bills if they don’t accurately project their income.
President Barack Obama’s new health care law will offer subsidies to help people buy private health insurance on state-based exchanges, if they don’t already get coverage through their employers. The subsidies are based on income. The lower your income, the bigger the subsidy.
But the government doesn’t know how much money you’re going to make next year. And when you apply for the subsidy, this fall, it won’t even know how much you’re making this year. So, unless you tell the government otherwise, it will rely on the best information it has: your 2012 tax return, filed this spring.
What happens if you or your spouse gets a raise and your family income goes up in 2014? You could end up with a bigger subsidy than you are entitled to. If that happens, the law says you have to pay back at least part of the money when you file your tax return in the spring of 2015.
That could result in smaller tax refunds or surprise tax bills for millions of middle-income families.
“That’s scary,” says Joan Baird of Springfield, Va. “I had no idea, and I work in health care.”
Baird, a health care information management worker, is far from alone. Health care providers, advocates and tax experts say the vast majority of Americans know very little about the new health care law, let alone the kind of detailed information many will need to navigate its system of subsidies and penalties.
(Excerpt) Read more at washington.cbslocal.com ...
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Wonder how Obama and his allies will spin this.
Well, we had to pass it in order to find out what’s in it, after all.
Obama is an ass. A Marxist pig.
And those are his good points.
Surprise = unexpected
Yeah, like that's going to happen in this economy. More likely to suffer a decrease in income and receive more subsidies. There's the silver lining!
When you add these health-care subsidies to the existing “progressive” tax system, and the myriad of other income-based subsidies; a great many people will be facing effective “tax” rates of over 100% of income. That won’t be good.
Now that we know “what’s in it” we’re finding out that ObamaCare is nothing but a communist wealth redistribution scheme.
Great. The very bad stuff commences to hit the fan. So much for his “legacy.”
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