Obamacare: Impact on Taxpayers

The hodgepodge of new taxes that have already or will soon take effect as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act may not all show up in the income tax tables, but their huge cost is still very real. This cost will become most apparent in lost wages and international competitiveness, and it reduces middle- and low-income families' wages just as surely as an income tax hike would. These taxes break President Barack Obama's promise not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year.

Major New Tax Increases in the PPACA......................
A new 40 percent excise tax on health insurance plans.
An increase in the Hospital Insurance (HI) portion of the payroll tax.
Payroll taxes on investment.

Mandates on Individuals and Businesses Raise Taxes



Other PPACA Tax Increases.................

The health legislation includes a myriad of smaller tax hikes, many of which will also fall on middle- and lower-income Americans. Many of them will not take effect until after Obama's potential second term. These hikes include:

A reduction in the number of medical products that taxpayers can purchase using health savings accounts (HSAs) and flexible spending accounts (FSAs).
An increase in the penalty for purchasing disallowed products with HSAs to 20 percent.
A limit on the amount that taxpayers can deposit in FSAs to $2,500 a year after 2013.
A requirement that corporations report more information on their business activities, the theory being that if corporations must report more about their activities, they will be less likely to try to avoid taxation.
An annual fee on manufacturers and importers of branded drugs based on each individual company's share of the total market. The tax starts at $2.5 billion in 2011 and goes to $2.8 billion in 2012-2013, $3.0 billion in 2014-2016, $4.0 billion in 2017, $4.1 billion in 2018, and $2.8 billion per year thereafter.
A 2.3 percent excise tax on manufacturers and importers of certain medical devices.
An annual fee on health insurance providers based on each company's share of the total market. Since health insurance companies stand to get more customers because of the individual and employer mandates, Congress forced them to share some of the revenue increase with the federal government. The tax raises $8 billion in 2014, $11.3 billion in 2015-2016, $13.9 billion in 2017, and $14.3 billion in 2018. After 2018, it will raise $14.3 billion, indexed to medical cost growth.
Elimination of the corporate deduction for prescription expenses for retirees. This provision has caused many large companies to announce write-downs of their future earnings.
An increase in the floor on the deduction for medical expenses from 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income to 10 percent.
A limit on the amount that health insurance companies can deduct from their taxes to $500,000 of compensation paid to officers, employees, directors, and service providers.
Repeal of the special deduction for expenses related to claims adjustments and administrative expenses specifically for Blue Cross/Blue Shield organizations.
A 10 percent excise tax on indoor tanning services.
Exclusion of unprocessed fuels from the existing cellulosic biofuel producer credit. Some industries that do not make biofuels were able to claim the credit because of byproducts produced during their manufacturing process. This credit is an unjustified use of the tax code that encourages certain kinds of energy production at the cost of others. Congress might better have scrapped the credit altogether.
A change in the definition of which business activities are for economic purposes and which are strictly to avoid taxation--many of which were perfectly legal--along with penalties for underpayments due to the latter.

Broken Promises to the Middle Class

President Obama repeated again and again during the campaign that he would not raise taxes on any family making less than $250,000 a year. He broke that promise early in his presidency when he increased cigarette taxes, and he has done so in a far grander way with this health care legislation. Not only will the higher HI taxes cost middle-income families jobs and suppress their wages, but the excise tax on high-cost plans will hit them directly.

Several of the taxes listed above, while not targeting middle-income families, will ultimately be passed on to them through higher prices. These include the fees on medical device manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and health insurance companies and the new tax on tanning services.

Read the entire article @ http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/04/obamacare-impact-on-taxpayers