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Taking the middle class? Kennedy & Obama Why???

By Brian Dooley - Jun 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm EDT

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Tags: cheny, Health Care, Health Insurance, Kennedy, poor, rich, tax

So, as a CPA, if I understand the news, Senator Kennedy plans to required each employee to have health insurance.

Then, President Obama, you are considering taxing the benefits.

Sorry to say, I am speechless (which of course why I am writing).

This sounds like a Republican proposal to tax the middle class; have you been hanging out Dick Cheney?

We are all struggling, and why would you tax our health care? I thought you were going to tax the rich, and help the poor.

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Taxation of health care | Report to Admin

By Otter from Irvine, CA Jul 6th 2009 at 8:41 pm EDT (Updated Jul 6th 2009 at 8:41 pm EDT)

Here is the problem. As a CPA, you understand that currently, health care paid by an employer is considered income. That being said, unless there is a reclassification of health care on the employer side, it is still viewed as income.

Do keep in mind that it is still deductible just as it was. The problem is that this plan is still in the making and as such, still has miles to go.
The IRS will have to change regulations which, as most people know, doesn't happen over night.

Beyond that, the vast majority of tax payers(the middle class) do not have enough itemized deductions to show any significant gain with an itemized deduction over the standard deduction given on the 1040 to make this arguable.

The proper way for Obama to be handling this would be to either establish a federally funded health care system that is more comprehensive than it's current state with Medicare and Medicade or issue a tax credit based on age(because there is a substantial difference in coverage cost dependent on age).

A real issue is the over all cost. Not that healthier citizens don't contribute more to a society but it will be a long term gain. We currently have 300M people in the US and even if conservatively averaged at $1500/yr, we are looking at a $450B expense.

Speechless or not, this is a daunting undertaking.

This is a long term goal which means that issues need to be raised at incremental steps but rather, once the numbers are in. You don't look at an income statement with only half the year entered now do you?

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