·        Individual Mandate Excise Tax (Page 296): If an individual fails to obtain qualifying coverage, he must pay an income surtax equal to the lesser of 2.5 percent of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) or the average premium. MAGI adds back in the foreign earned income exclusion and municipal bond interest. There is no exception for families making less than $250,000.

·        Employer Mandate Payroll Tax (Page 275): If an employer does not pay 72.5 percent of a single employee’s health premium (65 percent of a family employee), the employer must pay an excise tax equal to the following schedule:

 

Payroll Tax Rate	Average Payroll Size
N/A	<$500,000
2%	$500,000-$585,000
4%	$585,000-$670,000
6%	$670,000-$750,000
8%	$750,00<

 

Small business owners pay their taxes on their owners’ personal tax returns. Since this provision does not exempt business owners making less than $250,000 per year, this employer mandate tax will violate President Obama’s promise in some cases.

 

·        Cap on Flex-Spending Account (FSA) contributions at $2500 (Page 325): Currently, the contribution level is unlimited

·        Medicine Cabinet Tax (Page 324): Americans would no longer be able to purchase over-the-counter medicines with their FSA, Health Savings Account (HSA), or Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA)

·        Increase in the Non-Qualified HSA Distribution Penalty from 10% to 20% (Page 326): This makes HSAs less attractive, and paves the way for HSA pre-verification

 

There are 30 million Americans with FSAs. About 8 million Americans have an HSA. Virtually all of them make less than $250,000 per year. These are clear tax hikes on these families

 

·        Codification of the “Economic Substance Doctrine” (Page 349): Empowers the IRS to disallow a perfectly legal tax deduction or other tax relief merely because the IRS deems that the motive of the taxpayer was not primarily business-related. 

There is no exception for families making less than $250,000 per year.

 

My taxes pay for a war on terror costing 100's of billions of dollars. The terrorists were armed with box cutters. A lockable pilot's compartment entry would have avoided this whole mess. Two wars of choice. One we never knew the real reason for. The other we will never know when we have succeeded in our mission. In WWII, we knew what we were fighting for, and everybody shared in the sacrifice. As the tragedy at Fort Hood proved, what are we doing to those brave men and women who sacrifice their all for us? They go back to a war zone two, or more times, and have a increasingly high rate of mental illness. When will their mission be accomplished? If there was a Draft would we be fighting these wars?
>> charles gallo Friday, November 6, 2009 1:20 PM

It's the mandates for employer mandated insurance that are most bothersome to me. Today's unemployment numbers are the highest they've been since the 1980s. When businesses can't cover their costs, the first thing they do is cut labor; that's Business 101. No one likes doing it, but that's what happens. So if unemployment keeps going up, that means businesses are still having trouble covering their costs. Mandating insurance coverage, and fining companies that don't provide it, guarantees more costs. Which, in these economic times, guarantees more job cuts. It's not a big jump to understand that the health care bill creates unemployment.
>> PJP Friday, November 6, 2009 4:18 PM