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Obamacare Tax Totals $3 Billion In “Shared Responsibility Payments”
President Barack Obama is desperate to have some sort of legacy as he leaves office. To many liberals, a huge part of that legacy is Obamacare, or as they like to call it, the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
It is anything but affordable.
Democrats just love to boast about Obamacare enrollment numbers, as if everyone is clamoring to sign up for the “help” it brings.
JUST IN: ObamaCare enrollment hits 11.5 million https://t.co/lWRK8Sw7Bz pic.twitter.com/e3vvysQOxA
— The Hill (@thehill) January 10, 2017
As we all know, it’s a tax. If you don’t have health insurance and don’t sign up for Obamacare, you’ll be one of the millions who pays for it. Literally. Even those who do have Obamacare aren’t sitting pretty. Among other things, premiums are on the rise and many doctors simply do not take Obamacare.
Great legacy, right?
Recently, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen informed Congress of the amount the ACA/Obamacare raked in from its tax provision during the 2015 tax season. From his letter to Congress:
Under the individual shared responsibility provision, individuals must have qualifying health insurance coverage for each month of the year, to have an exemption from the requirement to have coverage or to make an individual shared responsibility payment.
Approximately 6.5 million taxpayers reported a total of $3.0 billion in individual shared responsibility payments. The average payment was around $470 and the median payment was around $330. About 7 percent of these payments were $100 or less, and about 70 percent of these payments were $500 or less.
According to Kaiser Health News, though, the penalty is both unpopular (no surprise there), and on the rise.
The individual mandate is the most unpopular part of Obamacare, surveys show, and both Republican congressional leaders and the incoming Trump administration have pledged to repeal it.
If they don’t, the 2017 penalty for adults will be the same as in 2016 — $695 or 2.5 percent of household income, whichever is higher. In 2015, the penalty was $325 or 2.5 percent of income.
It remains to be seen what will come from the repeal/replace debate that Republicans are having, and whether such a thing can or will happen simultaneously or even quickly.
Ultimately, Obamacare is a disaster, and is costly on many levels. No matter what happens to it, look for Democrats to somehow keep pushing the actual failure as a shining success for years to come.
The post Obamacare Tax Totals $3 Billion In “Shared Responsibility Payments” appeared first on RedState.
Source: http://www.redstate.com/kimberly_ross/2017/01/14/obamacare-tax-totals-3-billion-shared-responsibility-payments/
