[jeffkrol]

IRS Commissioner on Enforcement of Health Insurance Mandate

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman seemed to indicate that if you didn’t purchase health insurance and then refused to pay the fine, the IRS could seize any current or future tax refund headed your way. This leaves me feeling a bit confused.

The individual mandate will be phased in between 2014 and 2016. The new law says that if you don’t buy health insurance, you’ll have to pay a fine of either $695 or 2.5 percent of your income, whichever is higher. People who don’t earn enough to pay income tax or who, if forced to purchase health insurance, would end up spending more than 8 percent of their annual income, are exempt.
What if your failure to obtain health insurance means you owe the penalty but you nonetheless refuse to pay it? That’s where things get tricky. The IRS can’t throw you in jail, because the health reform law explicitly states (on Page 336): “In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure.”
Nor can the IRS seize your property, because the law states (also on Page 336) that the health and human services secretary may not “file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty … or levy on any such property with respect to such failure.”
The Commish was then asked this question:
“If you can’t use sanctions to collect health care fees, what will keep people from getting away with not signing up for insurance coverage?”
Here’s what he said (emphasis is Noah’s):
My belief is while some people may play with the kind of question that was asked, the vast majority of American people have a healthy respect for the law and want to be compliant with their tax obligations and whatever else the law holds. People will get letters from us. We can actually do collection if need be. People can get offsets of their tax returns in future years, so there’s a variety of ways for us to focus on things like fraud, things like abuse, and we’re gonna run a balanced program.
Apparently Mr. Shulman doesn’t realize that the seizure of a taxpayer’s refund is, in fact, a seizure of his property and, therefore, prohibited under the clear language of the healthcare bill.
My guess is that President Obama and the Democrats intended the healthcare mandate to be unenforceable and included it in the bill only to frighten folks into purchasing health insurance.
And they accuse Republicans of fear mongering?

Which brings up my 2 latest pet peeves..
1)Honest people getting screwed
2)p!ss poor framing of a subject by EVERYONE.......