
Mixed blessing
Those expecting refunds probably aren't very happy.
Staff behind the US government's HealthCare.gov say Americans may have received bungled tax forms from the portal – and should hold off filing them. The health insurance broker on Friday confirmed that it would have to send out new 1095-A claim forms after approximately 800,000 people received incorrectly calculated forms …
For those keeping score at home, we have: healthcare.gov can not find its ass with both hands and a map, insurance companies are losing customer data left and right, and now the tax forms are screwed up. And this was supposed to be BETTER than universal single-payer show-your-ID-at-the-doc's-and-you're-good healthcare? If anyone's lost a B-Ark, I think it's in Washington.
We were, briefly, forced into the exchange. Once we got out and cancelled that policy, the insurance company fraudulently claimed two further months worth of subsidies, which have now shown up on our tax form.
There is no mechanism for disputing this, so our options are: (a) take the hit and give our money to some crooks who should be in jail, or (b) get one of our congresscritters to raise a fuss and then get audited by the IRS for the rest of our lives.
This is the kind of crap that we used to laugh at banana republics about, but it's happening right here, right now.
I live in Massachusetts, which couldn't even get its exchange running at all until a few months ago. And it's just a wordpress site that sends you off to some corporate site. Oh, and the Mass Health Connector is run by Dell, who should really stick to making hardware...
This year I'm going uninsured... I dread dealing with these damn insurance companies and tax headaches, more than anything else (like cancer, for example). Unfortunately I don't foresee this getting fixed anytime soon because it's not so bad if you're poor, like so many Americans these days. OTOH I don't know if you can buy votes with crappy free healthcare after you've taken away everything else.
>>This year I'm going uninsured... I dread dealing with these damn insurance companies
>>and tax headaches, more than anything else
Uninsured for similar reasons here too.
I would add that I really hope national health succeeds eventually in the US.
For now I can't get past the government dysfunction and a feeling the insurance companies are making out like bandits.
You can tell that the media doesn't want to report on this. They don't bother telling people the full impact of this latest gaffe. Because of the obscene complexities of the US tax code, a great many of those filers paid a tax preparer. Now they have to pay again (why should the preparer correct them for free? Wasn't his fault). Worse, some companies give out loans based on the expected refund. Now they are wrong. Finally, I have prepared state taxes in four states. They are all based on the adjusted gross income as shown on your federal taxes, and some states give credit based on federal taxes paid. I suspect most all states do they same thing. Those returns must now be amended as well.
Simply saying the taxpayer will have to file an amended return glosses over the time, trouble, and expenses filers must now endure.