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.
But you voted for Obama and the Democrats because they care. Aren’t you proud?!
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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?!
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.