Thread: IRS Warns: Obamacare Tax Must Be Paid with Tax Return

Americans For Tax Reform
Posted by John Kartch on Tuesday, February 25, 2014

For any month in 2014 that you or any of your dependents don’t maintain coverage and don’t qualify for an exemption, you will need to make an individual shared responsibility payment with your 2014 tax return filed in 2015.

IRS Warns: Obamacare Tax Must Be Paid with Tax Return

Agency employs Orwellian term “Shared Responsibility Payment” to describe Obamacare individual mandate tax.

President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service today quietly released a series of Obamacare “Health Care Tax Tips” warning Americans that they must obtain “qualifying” health insurance – as defined by the federal government – or face a “shared responsibility payment” when filing their tax returns in 2015. The term “shared responsibility payment” refers to the Obamacare individual mandate tax, one of at least seven tax hikes in the healthcare law that directly hit families making less than $250,000 per year.

In “Four Tax Facts about the Health Care Law for Individuals” the agency writes:

Your 2014 tax return will ask if you had insurance coverage or qualified for an exemption. If not, you may owe a shared responsibility payment when you file in 2015.

In “The Individual Shared Responsibility Payment- An Overview” the agency warns Americans they must prove they were covered each and every month of the year:

For any month in 2014 that you or any of your dependents don’t maintain coverage and don’t qualify for an exemption, you will need to make an individual shared responsibility payment with your 2014 tax return filed in 2015.

In “IRS Reminds Individuals of Health Care Choices for 2014”the agency details the calculations Americans can look forward to if they are liable for the tax:

If you (or any of your dependents) do not maintain coverage and do not qualify for an exemption, you will need to make an individual shared responsibility payment with your return. In general, the payment amount is either a percentage of your household income or a flat dollar amount, whichever is greater. You will owe 1/12th of the annual payment for each month you (or your dependents) do not have coverage and are not exempt. The annual payment amount for 2014 is the greater of:

• 1 percent of your household income that is above the tax return filing threshold for your filing status, such as Married Filing Jointly or single, or
• Your family’s flat dollar amount, which is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child, limited to a maximum of $285.

As confirmed by previous IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

Once fully phased in, the Obamacare individual mandate tax will rise steeply, to a maximum of 2.5 percent of Adjusted Gross Income or $2,085 – whichever is higher

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This all makes me SO MAD!!!!!

The term “shared responsibility payment” refers to the Obamacare individual mandate tax,

Well, well, now doesn't this sound Socialist? The Supreme Court called it a TAX. Is is a tax or a wealth redistribution payment"?

IRS: OBAMACARE TAX MUST BE PAID...

Harry Reid Denies All 'Horror Stories'...

'All Are Untrue'...

Public Rebellion Brewing...



http://drudgereport.com/

the Democrat party has turned into the new and improved "Upgraded" Nigerian Scam Artists

"Throw the BUMS Out"

Can Obamacare Avoid a Consumer Rebellion?

Insurers bet that low premiums would be enough to get customers to stomach narrow networks, but a new poll suggests they may have gotten it wrong.


The Affordable Care Act didn't create the tradeoff between insurance premiums and coverage networks, but that doesn't mean consumers aren't furious about it.(AFP)
By Sam Baker
February 26, 2014
When Obamacare handed insurance companies millions of compulsory customers, it also handed them a reminder of one of their industry's toughest realities: Consumers want low premiums, and they want to see any doctor they want. And it's impossible to give them both.

Related Stories

• Report: Health Premiums Will Go Up for Small Businesses
• Medicare Advantage Faces Rate Cut

Generally, insurers selling plans on Obamacare's exchanges opted to keep premiums low, hoping that the public would prefer a low up-front price tag—even if that meant customers couldn't always pick their first-choice doctor.

But "if you like your doctor you can hope she's in our network" was always going to be a tough sell for insurers. With the insurance market now viewed through the distorted lens of the endless partisan fight over Obamacare, it's going to be harder than ever. Republicans have pounced on the narrow networks, citing them as further proof that President Obama lied when he said the Affordable Care Act would not cost people their doctors.
And as the volume of enrollees and rhetoric rises, insurers are worried about a possible backlash. Narrow networks are getting a bad reputation, and consumers may demand more choices.

It has happened before: In the 1990s insurers hoped that by using HMOs to move their coverage away from expensive doctors and hospitals, they could control health costs while creating an incentive for providers to lower their prices. What they created instead was a popular rebellion, with customers balking at the plans and complaining loudly to Congress about it.
Some analysts see a similar climate brewing now.
"People don't like to hear 'no,' and this is saying 'no,' " said Austin Frakt, a health policy economist at Boston University.
That's clear from the Kaiser Family Foundation's latest tracking poll on the health care law. Among those the foundation surveyed, 51 percent said they'd prefer a broader network and higher premiums, compared with just 37 percent who preferred "a more limited range of doctors and hospitals" in exchange for lower premiums. And most of the 37 percent changed their minds once they were reminded that a plan with "a more limited range of doctors and hospitals" might mean the same thing as "you would not be able to visit the doctors and hospitals you usually use."

The administration is in a tough spot on network size. Republicans have laid the whole issue at Obamacare's feet, even though it's a market dynamic that Obamacare really didn't cause: It's a business decision between price and quality that existed long before the law was created.

But it's a market dynamic that nevertheless exists within Obamacare policies, and the administration clearly wants to address a potentially unpopular part of people's coverage—without making that coverage more expensive and thus accessible to fewer people.

"The administration has shouldered the blame for things that are so vastly beyond its control, and has attempted valiantly to work these problems out," said Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health care policy at George Washington University.

Republicans have played up narrow networks in their criticism of the law, arguing that the prevalence of narrow provider networks invalidates Obama's promise that "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor."

But that assumes you had a doctor to lose in the first place, and many of the people signing up for Obamacare didn't. According to New York state's exchange, about 70 percent of people who have picked a plan in the state were previously uninsured.

That's part of the reason insurers are still betting that narrow networks can gain traction.
In the latest Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 54 percent of the people most likely to be shopping for insurance through the Affordable Care Act's exchanges—those who are uninsured or who buy insurance on their own—said they'd rather have a low premium than a wide network of providers. Just 35 percent of the likeliest Obamacare customers said they would prefer a more expensive plan with a broader provider network.

And there are some substantive differences between the HMOs of the '90s and the narrow networks of today. For starters, HMOs made it difficult to see specialists, attempting to cement care around cheaper primary-care doctors. The ACA includes new tools designed to better coordinate care among hospitals, doctors, and specialists. It also requires plans to cover certain services that HMOs were able to limit.

Still, it's largely up to the states to determine whether an insurance plan's network is adequate enough to actually make those benefits accessible. And the Obama administration is at least sending a signal that narrow networks are on its radar, if not directly doing anything—yet—to forcibly broaden them.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently released new guidance for insurers about their networks. Its most tangible change was to boost the number of "essential community providers" a plan has to include, from 20 percent to 30 percent. But the rule also hinted at closer scrutiny of plans' overall networks—without spelling out specific changes that would upset the balance plans have struck between access and cost.

The guidance says CMS will more thoroughly review networks to make sure they're "adequate," rather than simply taking plans' word for it. And what constitutes "adequate"? CMS won't say, and outside observers don't know.

"We don't know what that standard is," Rosenbaum said. "I have no idea what that standard is … this is like otherworldly, this thing."

IRS Wasted $11.6 Million of Computer Software

TIGTA: ‘Software license management at the IRS is not being adequately performed’





AP



BY: Elizabeth Harrington
April 4, 2014 2:45 pm
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) bought $11.6 million worth of computer software the agency never used, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).
TIGTA attributed the error to poor management and a lack of inventory of more than $200 million in software purchased by the IRS, according to an audit released Thursday.
“Software license management at the IRS is not being adequately performed,” the audit said. “Efficient and cost-effective management of the IRS’s software assets is crucial to ensuring that information technology services continue to support the IRS’s business operations and help it to provide services to taxpayers efficiently.”
Upon reviewing the IRS’ software contracts, TIGTA found 11 products that were bought by the IRS but never installed.
“The original compliance review determined that the IRS did not deploy, i.e., purchased but did not use, mainframe licenses and software support, resulting in the IRS wasting an estimated $11.6 million,” the audit said.
The $11.6 million in wasted software was part of a 5-year contract with IBM worth $239 million, which was awarded in September 2007.
Since the IRS has no software license management system the agency “cannot effectively determine if the software contracts it enters into are reflective of its current or future projected mainframe software license and support needs,” TIGTA said.
The agency watchdog said waste is likely to continue until the IRS improves management over its software contracts.

“The lack of an enterprise-wide inventory with comprehensive data on all mainframe software assets and software licensing impedes the IRS’s ability to more effectively analyze the relationships among its software license agreements and vendors to more cost effectively buy software licenses and maintenance,” TIGTA said. “Until the IRS addresses the issues presented in this report, it is incurring increased risks in managing software licenses.”
“In fact, these deficiencies have already resulted in an estimated waste of $11.6 million and overutilization of $1.5 million in licenses and software support fees on one mainframe software contract,” they said.
In response to the audit, the IRS argued it did not waste $11.6 million. The agency admitted it did not use 5 of the 11 products, and said it had “no obligation to pay for them.”

However, TIGTA reported that when discussing the products with the agency, IRS management “agreed that these 11 products were paid for and were never deployed.”
The IRS could not provide documentation to back up their claim, TIGTA said.


http://freebeacon.com/issues/irs-was...uter-software/

In response to the audit, the IRS argued it did not waste $11.6 million.

Hmmmm Where is the money!!Time to audit the IRS!!