Working poor families to be big losers under Obamacare
ObamaCare is here to stay and will financially impact everyone. It will burden business owners and their employees alike. But who may be hurt the most?
CNSNews.com is reporting:
Using the conditions laid out in the regulations, the IRS calculates that a family earning $120,000 per year that did not buy insurance would need to pay a "penalty" (a word the IRS still uses despite the Supreme Court ruling that it is in fact a "tax") of $2,400 in 2016.
The families that are living at or below the 133% poverty level will likely not feel as much pain. These families, because of their low incomes will already have qualified for state sponsored Medicaid coverage. They would not be penalized.
The higher income families may also not experience as much financial penalty. These families will probably already have chosen to purchase qualifying insurance and therefore not be subject to the penalty. This is a big if only because qualifying insurance is still being addressed in the courts.
The people that will likely be hurt the most are the single parent homes or the families that are living on small incomes just above 133% of poverty. This is approximately $31,000 a year for a household of 4. The adults will not qualify for the state sponsored Medicaid programs, their children may, but the penalty will still apply.
Many of these families now qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit each year when they file their tax returns and ultimately receive this credit along with all the taxes they pay through their paycheck back. The EITC was put in place to help these very families.
How will the government collect its tax penalty from these unsuspecting households? I see no other way but by reducing the amount for their EITC payments and therefore reducing their tax refunds.
Now a lot of ObamaCare is still a mystery and we will learn what is in it as we go. But if the Democratic Party wanted to chip away at the EITC program, just limit it of stop it. They can't do that. That would be political suicide.