STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Friday, 24 July 2015

[Demeter]

13. The newest Obamacare fail: penalties of $36,500 per worker

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-newest-obamacare-fail-penalties-of36500-per-worker-2015-07-23?siteid=yhoof2

Hey, employers, don’t even think about reimbursing your workers’ health-insurance premiums.

Beginning this month, the IRS can levy fines amounting to $100 per worker per day or $36,500 per worker per year, with a maximum of $500,000 per firm.

This Internal Revenue Service penalty is not written into the Obamacare law. The amount is over 12 times the statutory amount in the Affordable Care Act of $3,000 per worker per year. That is what an employer is charged when one of its employees gets subsidized care on one of the health-care exchanges. It’s 18 times the $2,000 penalty for not offering adequate health insurance.

The $100 fine is applicable not only to large firms, but also those with fewer than 50 workers that are exempt from the $2,000 and $3,000 employer penalties. Firms with one worker are exempt. The penalty for S-corporations will take effect on Jan. 1, 2016. The new rule is broad, sweeping and overly punitive.

This new IRS penalty does not assist in the ACA’s stated goal of expanding health insurance in the United States. Rather, it does the opposite. It discourages people from finding and purchasing the insurance that suits them. It also discourages companies from hiring. Consider that 14% of businesses that do not offer group health insurance have some sort of arrangement to reimburse their employees for insurance costs, according to the National Federation of Independent Business....