The IRS will bear responsibility in making sure that taxpayers have health insurance, and taxing them if they dont, if some provisions in the legislation now in Congress go through in their present form.
An interesting blog post on a site called
In the House version, they would have to furnish the name, address, and taxpayer identification number of the primary insured person, the name of each individual covered under the policy, and the period under which each person was provided coverage. Both versions of the bill allow the Secretary of Health and Human Services to add other reporting requirements.
If a person does not have acceptable health insurance coverage at any time during the tax year, a tax would be imposed under the House bill equal to 2.5 percent of either the taxpayers modified adjusted gross income or the gross income specified under Section 6012(a)(1) of the Tax Code. The Senate version has some differences, including calling the tax a shared responsibility payment and giving people a month to go without insurance, with some exemptions allowed.
Presumably the IRS would be able to cross-check income tax returns with health coverage filings and withhold income tax refunds if people cannot prove they have acceptable health coverage, either from an employer or some other source. Effectively the legislation could allow the IRS to get involved in reviewing the health care and coverage information of taxpayers and their dependents for the first time, raising some privacy concerns.
This begs the question of how the IRS is going to determine that someones health insurance coverage is adequate or appropriate. For many uninsured people who are forced to buy health insurance or face penalties unless they qualify for subsidies or Medicaid, chances are theyre going to opt for bargain basement coverage that will provide them with some form of insurance for the lowest cost possible. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out and what kind of guidance the IRS would provide if the health reform bill passes, which lately has been looking less and less certain.
Are we going to see traditional insurers and fly-by-night companies rushing out ultra-cheap plans that promise much, but deliver little, in order to allow people to meet the minimum coverage requirements, or are the so-called public option or the murky insurance cooperatives going to somehow fill the gap? Maybe one day insurance fraud will become a form of tax fraud, even if its just to claim one has insurance when the insurance is either fictitious or inadequate in the event of a major medical expense.