TurboTax: Around 70 percent of uninsured Americans requested to be exempted from getting Obamacare insurance.
According to TurboTax, a majority of Americans are not paying the tax penalties that are mandated for refusing Obamacare health insurance. It appears that the Obama administration still has plenty of problems when it comes to Obamacare.
TurboTax claims that 70 percent of its customers express that all Obamacare healthcare plans cost too much. This is even for the least expensive ones. As a result, they file their taxes and take advantage of a financial burden exemption offered by the IRS. This means that they refuse Obamacare health coverage.
Some claimed Obamacare exemption because of other reasons. For instance, they were evicted, had a death in the family or endured some other type of hardship that caused them them to deny Obamacare coverage. The number of Obamacare exemptions for this year is the same as that of the 2014 tax season. The 2014 tax season was the first time that taxpayers were subjected to Obamacare penalties.
In addition, the Health and Human Services Department released a report that claims that Obama’s administration got 18 warnings or complaints about HealthCare.gov. Supposedly, the website was a total failure when Americans used it for the first time in October 2013.
The biggest complaint was that the site was disorganized, and that the decision making process was less than successful. Instructions were unclear, and no one anticipated the large number of problems associated with Obamacare.
The Obamacare website is working fine these days, but Americans are still unknowledgeable about its mandates and penalties. This is beginning to negatively impact a lot of people.
The penalty for denying Obamacare coverage increased from $95 in 2014 to $325 in 2015. This can also be calculated to be one percent of your income in 2014 or two percent in 2015.
For anyone who has unpaid penalties in 2015, the penalty will increase to $695 or 2.5 percent of their income during the next tax season, if they fail to have healthcare coverage.
However, there are those that will qualify for an Obamacare exemption due to the following:
They are in prison.
They are illegal immigrants.
They have insurance via a religious ministry.
They can claim hardship exemptions due to things such as domestic violence.
They have a low income
According to the IRS, last year there were about 300,000 people who paid a penalty for not having insurance, but they met the requirements to get an Obamacare exemption. These penalties are more than likely to double during the upcoming tax season. This is why TurboTax recommends that you should determine if you quality for an Obamacare extension this tax season.
Minnesota Republican Governor Decries Obamacare
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton refuses to continue to defend Barack Obama’s health care plan in the future. This is curious because of the fact that he is a Democrat. He has gone as far as to say that the Affordable Care Act is not affordable. This comments didn’t just come out of nowhere. They came on the heels of residents of his state’s premiums doubling in the last year.
The ACA has caused many different insurance providers to withdraw from the market. Many large companies have claimed that they are losing a lot of money by participating in Obamacare. If too many of these big companies exit the market the law itself could be deemed ineffective and changed. Some of the more notable companies that have opted out are Blue Cross, UnitedHealth, and Aetna.
At first, mostly Republicans were critical of Obamacare. Some Democrats have taken up against it more recently. Former president Bill Clinton has been quoted as saying that it is the “craziest plan in the world.”
Critics of the plan think that older people should be able to buy into public options. The most common public option is Medicare. Clinton also thinks that people should be able to opt into Medicare at a younger age.