In an attempt to make Obamacare sound as non-threatening as possible, the AP actually makes O-Care sound like a joke and the IRS like the Keystone Cops.
Do you believe this?
The law, however, severely limits the ability of the IRS to collect the penalties. There are no civil or criminal penalties for refusing to pay it and the IRS cannot seize bank accounts or dock wages to collect it. No interest accumulates for unpaid penalties.
So how can the IRS enforce the mandate? Scary letters and threats to withhold tax refunds.
So how about we just refuse to play this game and don’t pay? Wouldn’t withholding a refund effectively be a “penalty”?
I know what the letter of the law says but as I have pointed out, we do know that the administrative law has not been written yet. There are many ways to collect this mandate without it being considered a civil or criminal penalty – the IRS can craft a rule that this must be collected as part of withholding via your employer and if you can prove on April 15th that you had insurance all year, you get a “refund” or a credit against taxes due…but right now, they don’t even know how they will make you prove it:
The IRS has not yet issued procedures for taxpayers to prove they have insurance. But IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, in a 2010 speech, said he envisioned a process similar to the one used by taxpayers to report interest or investment income.
Under this scenario, an insurance company would send the taxpayer and the IRS forms each year verifying that the taxpayer has qualified insurance. Taxpayers would file the forms with the IRS along with their returns, and the IRS would check them to make sure they match the information supplied by the insurance companies.
The very group, low income families, which this was supposed to allow funds to buy insurance, will be exempt:
Those who don’t get qualified health insurance will be required to pay the penalty – or tax – starting for the 2014 tax year, unless they are exempt because of low income, religious beliefs, or because they are members of American Indian tribes.
This little “out” will do what it always does – give every aggrieved group and Democrat administration the leeway to issue “waivers” to favored groups while sticking normal wage earners, 99% of whom already have insurance, with the bill for the rest. This has really been the goal all along – redistribution of wealth under the guise of providing health “insurance”.
Here’s another lie:
Treasury spokeswoman Sabrina Siddiqui said, “The overwhelming majority of funds used by the agency to implement the Affordable Care Act go to administer the premium tax credits, which will be a tax cut averaging about $4,000 for more than 20 million middle-class people and families.”
The Economic Policy Journal notes that there are, in fact, 21 new or higher taxes as a result of this law here: Obamacare: 21 New or Higher Taxes.
I want to point out one other little misleading quote from this article and it is this:
The law allows the IRS to withhold tax refunds to collect the penalty, and most filers get refunds. This year, 77 percent of the 135 million individual income tax returns processed by the IRS qualified for a refund. The average refund: $2,707.
This makes paying tax seem so benign. Never mind how much you paid in, yea!, you got a refund! Your government sent you a check! Isn’t that swell of them?
Getting a “refund” from the government does not mean that the government is giving you a bonus – it means that you overpaid your taxes, likely in the hopes that you didn’t underpay and have to write a fat check on April 15th. This reporter makes it sound as if the average taxpayer won a lottery when in reality, it is their own money that they could have had in their pockets all year long.
The AP has worked hard to earn their alternate name, the Administration Press. They are sending the signals that they are going to go all out to help Obama soft-sell this monstrosity.
