2014: BE PREPARED

Excerpt from The American Spectator

When President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka "Obamacare") goes fully into effect in 2014, the American people will only then begin to see the implications of its thorough government takeover of health care, in all its glory. . .

Perhaps the most important and complex new IRS responsibility is to enforce the act's individual and employer mandates requiring individuals and employers to buy the health insurance not that they want, but that the federal government says they must have. This will effectively be a new burdensome payroll tax on the middle class and working people, and on job creators, as politics will force every politically correct benefit to be included in the required insurance, causing its cost to soar. That health insurance will likely cost $20,000 per year per family to start, rising rapidly after that. President Obama's 2008 campaign promise not to raise taxes on singles making less than $200,000 a year, and couples making less than $250,000, has been thrown aside and forgotten, with the Supreme Court ruling that the individual mandate is constitutional precisely because it is a tax.

Individuals who fail to comply and buy the health insurance chosen for them by Kathleen Sebelius will be subjected to a penalty of $695 per person per year, up to a maximum of $2,085 per family, or 2.5% of household income, whichever is greater. Pilla explains that "The gross applicable penalty is pro-rated to apply on a monthly basis 'for any month during which any failure' to have adequate coverage exists."
The PPACA precludes the IRS from using its levy power or filing tax liens to collect these penalties on individuals. But Pilla notes the IRS can offset the penalties against any federal income tax refund owed to you. The IRS can also seize any state or local tax refund you are due as well. And if you send any payment to the IRS that is not specifically designated in writing as applying to a specific IRS debt, the IRS can apply it to your health insurance penalty, and you will not be able to get it back.

The employer mandate is a new vicious tax on job creation that is already causing employers to cut back on hiring. . .

The New Face of Health Care -- the IRS