{Indiana politics} The real healthcare assault on taxpayers

[Buck the Taxpayer]

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IRS chief: Buy health insurance or lose your tax refund
By Gautham Nagesh - The Daily Caller | Published: 04/05/10 at 5:16 PM
| Updated: 04/06/10 at 12:36 PM

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman discusses his
role in overseeing the collection of $2.4 trillion in tax revenue
during a luncheon gathering at the National Press Club in Washington,
Monday, April 5, 2010. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)Individuals who
don’t purchase health insurance may lose their tax refunds according
to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman. After acknowledging the recently
passed health-care bill limits the agency’s options for enforcing the
individual mandate, Shulman told reporters that the most likely way to
penalize individuals that don’t comply is by reducing or confiscating
their tax refunds.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Monday, Shulman downplayed the
IRS’s role in enforcing the recent overhaul of the health insurance
industry by claiming the agency would not aggressively target
individuals who don’t purchase coverage. He noted that the health-care
bill expressly forbids the agency from freezing bank accounts, seizing
assets or pursuing criminal charges, but when pressed said the IRS
would most likely use tax refund offsets to penalize those that don’t
comply with the mandate. The IRS uses refund offsets to collect from
individuals that owe the federal government a delinquent debt.

“These are not the kinds of things we send agents out about,” Shulman
said. “These are things where you get a letter from us. Congress was
very careful to make sure there was nothing too punitive in this
bill.”

Many reports have claimed that enforcement of the individual mandate
will be non-existent, but Shulman’s answers indicate differently.
According to BusinessWeek, starting in 2015 Americans who don’t
purchase insurance will be subject to a fine of $325 and that sum
increases to $695 in 2016. However, the commissioner seemed confident
that in most cases individuals would either receive subsidies to
purchase insurance or simply do so on their own in order to comply
with the law.

“The vast majority of American people have a healthy respect for the
law and want to be compliant with their tax obligations,” Shulman
said, mentioning letters, collection notices and offsets as among the
various ways the IRS will reach out to people without coverage.

During his speech Shulman said threats against the IRS have not risen
despite media reports to the contrary. He disagreed that it has become
more dangerous to work for the IRS following the February incident in
which a disgruntled pilot flew his plane into the agency’s Austin,
Texas office, killing one employee.

“There’s been a lot of stuff in the press around increased threats,
which is actually inaccurate,” Shulman said. “What there has been is
increased chatter on the Internet that has an anti-government
sentiment.”

He also said it is too early to know what additional resources or how
many employees the IRS will need to enforce compliance with the
mandate and clarified his reasons for using a professional tax
preparer.

“I wouldn’t read into anything about me doing it now,” Shulman said.
“I’m just a busy guy and have had good service for the past 15 years.”


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