The madness of IRS Obamacare paperwork
Finding out what’s in it: Tax preparers discover that Obamacare adds so much paperwork to their work it isn’t worth it to do it.
About two-thirds of the way through the morning I questioned the whole process. I stated that if someone walked into to my office who was receiving the [Obamacare subsidy] that I would not accept them as a client. The cost of preparing the paperwork to get them properly qualified to receive the benefit would exceed anything I could reasonably charge them. The instructor, a fine fellow from Iowa, stated he unfortunately had to agree with me. So now tax preparers will have to decide whether to accept clients based on our health care system — just like doctors.
There’s lot more. Read the whole thing.
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Finding out what’s in it: Tax preparers discover that Obamacare adds so much paperwork to their work it isn’t worth it to do it.
About two-thirds of the way through the morning I questioned the whole process. I stated that if someone walked into to my office who was receiving the [Obamacare subsidy] that I would not accept them as a client. The cost of preparing the paperwork to get them properly qualified to receive the benefit would exceed anything I could reasonably charge them. The instructor, a fine fellow from Iowa, stated he unfortunately had to agree with me. So now tax preparers will have to decide whether to accept clients based on our health care system — just like doctors.
There’s lot more. Read the whole thing.
But you voted for Obama and the Democrats because they care. Aren’t you proud?!
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I work part time at a tax attorney’s office and was in one of these seminars the other day. This article does a good job explaining the tax prep nightmare, but I think the amount of work involved is probably even more daunting than described.
I’d think that most taxpayers that owe a penalty (or “Shared Responsibility Payment”) will be better off paying the full penalty rather than the fees to an attorney or CPA to calculate the correct amount. The poorer people receiving credits to help pay premiums are really going to have a nightmare computing the proper credit amount. My office has very few in these circumstances, thank goodness.
The lawyer leading the seminar suggested locking congress member in a room and requiring them to fill out the form for three sample scenarios within 5 hours. None of them could complete the task I would think.
One of the IRS publications used to compute the proper credits isn’t even available yet. It was published as a draft on 1/5/15 and probably won’t be final for another month or so.
I have just worked out the form 8965 for my own taxes. It is quite the task, with a worksheet that runs around in circles just to conclude that the entire $95 is owed ($285 for families).
Plus, I cannot figure out how to fill out the 1040 so that the $95 penalty — er — tax (otherwise it is unconstitutional) does not show up as part of what I have to pay. We were promised that if we didn’t owe any money, then we wouldn’t have to pay the penalty, that it would only be charged to us if we had money coming back to us. I guess we were gullible once again.
Centuries from now, when historians study the demise of the United States, they will be astounded to find that the US required a vast, multi-Billion dollar industry of highly trained professionals merely to help people figure out how much tax they owed the government! (That’s not counting the billions the government spent on thousands of trained employees to figure out and collect what citizens and businesses owed).
In addition to that, the tax code is so large and complex that even the IRS experts can’t decipher it (despite the small army of experts that you pointed out).
One of the insanities of our government is that it presumes that we are unable to run our own lives without its “help” in determining what toilets to use, what light bulbs are OK, what bags the stores can offer for free, or what size soda we should buy, yet we are still responsible for filling out our tax forms properly.