Journal of Accountancy on health care reform

[9thdoctor]

There’s a new article in the Journal of Accountancy analyzing the health care reform legislation, which highlights its new Big Brother aspects from a non-partisan practitioner’s point of view. A one line summary: A lot more information will soon be provided to the government, and the tax increases on individuals making $125K/year and up are considerable.

http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/May/20102731.htm

And a new 10% federal tax on indoor tanning services? WTF??

[imurray]

There’s a new article in the Journal of Accountancy analyzing the health care reform legislation, which highlights its new Big Brother aspects from a non-partisan practitioner’s point of view. A one line summary: A lot more information will soon be provided to the government, and the tax increases on individuals making $125K/year and up are considerable.

http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2010/May/20102731.htm

And a new 10% federal tax on indoor tanning services? WTF??

I have to correct the summary for the sake of accuracy: $125k/yr is for married individuals filing a separate return. It's $200k/yr for single individuals and $250k/yr for couples filing a joint return. It's minor to some, but a $75k/yr or $125k/yr difference is a lot to me! Aside from that, the people with the greatest potential for suffering are those individuals and families with household incomes just over 400% of the federal poverty level.

We tend to focus on the "wealthy" and the very poor when the truth is the wealthy can probably afford the increase (even if it means changing the way they live) and the very poor will get full compensation, but the person or family in the middle has less room to maneuver financially and won't receive any federal support.

Edited May 5, 2010 by Panoptic

[9thdoctor]

I have to correct the summary for the sake of accuracy:

My original wording qualifies as accurate, however the details of the tax increases don’t reduce readily to a sound bite. Nevertheless I shouldn’t have included that since it wasn’t what I was trying to point out.

My focus is on the increased information reporting, such as 1099 forms for corporations, which means basically that nearly all disbursements a business makes will have to be reported to the federal government*. You’ll have to have the EIN (social security number) for every business you patronize, and then report or face a per-form penalty.

Next, insurers will soon be providing the IRS with a yearly information report on your coverage, plus “such other information as the Treasury secretary may require.”

There’s more in there, but it’s tedious to explain to a non-accounting crowd and I doubt the interest level is sufficient. Revised one line summary: Big Brother is getting new toys to play with. Click link above for details.

*“for the sake of accuracy”, this applies to aggregate payments over $600/year, and payments to tax-exempt corporations remain an exception. Such payments probably require careful record keeping (and reporting) anyway, since they’re likely to qualify as charitable deductions. Also, payments to a governmental entity presumably don’t need to be reported this way. Yet.

I want to be a lion tamer.