ObamaCare’s Tax Hikes

From Insider Online:

InsiderOnline Blog: March 2012

ObamaCare’s Tax Hikes

ObamaCare violates President Obama’s several promises not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year, not once, but seven times, writes Americans for Tax Reform head Grover Norquist (Daily Caller, March 23):

The individual mandate has an excise tax for non-compliance of at least 2.5 percent of adjusted gross income. […]

The medicine cabinet tax prevents families from using their health savings accounts (HSAs) or workplace flex-savings accounts (FSAs) to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines on a pre-tax basis. […]

The “special needs kids” or “braces” tax puts a cap of $2,500 for the first time on FSAs. Prior to Obamacare’s passage, families with very high medical bills could put an IRS-unlimited amount in their FSAs to pay for things like special needs tuition or braces on a pre-tax basis. Obamacare changed all that. […]

Obamacare imposes a 20 percent “surtax” on non-medical, early withdrawals from HSAs. This results in a tax rate on these distributions which can easily exceed 60 percent. […]

President Obama’s signature law decreases the amount that families can deduct in medical expenses from their taxable income. Under present law, medical expense claims must be reduced by 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income. Obamacare increases this “haircut” to 10 percent of AGI. […]

Searching under every rock for more tax money, Obamacare has already imposed a 10 percent excise tax on tanning bed sessions. […]

Finally, in 2018 Obamacare will levy a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost (“Cadillac”) health insurance plans — which will, of course, have to be built into the health insurance premium, making them even more expensive. […]

As Norquist notes, none of these tax hikes provide an exemption for those making less than $250,000 per year.

Posted on 03/26/12 05:49 PM by Alex Adrianson | Blog Archive