STUMP » Articles » Obamacare Tax Watch: Even the IRS is Bitching » 18 March 2015, 12:33

What do I mean, “even the IRS”? They were always going to be bitching for a variety of reasons.

Story from the Washington Times:

The IRS is unable to answer most taxpayers’ calls this year because it’s had to put money into getting up and running for Obamacare, agency Commissioner John Koskinen told Congress on Wednesday.

Mr. Koskinen said his agency has had to shift tens of millions of dollars from customer service over to build the computer systems and get ready to handle questions this year about Obamacare and the law’s tax penalty, which kicks in for the first time this year.

The commissioner said President Obama’s 2010 law requires the agency to handle Obamacare taxes, but Congress has refused to provide any money, so he’s shifted user fees that used to go to customer service over to handle the Affordable Care Act and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

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On Wednesday, Rep. Anders Crenshaw, the chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the IRS, said the agency acts as though it is “entitled to $13 billion” in funding, but in reality the IRS must prove it has earned that level of funding.

“We deliberately lowered the IRS funding to a level that will make the IRS think twice about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it,” the chairman said.

Yeah, it’s really just whining for more money.

Separately, I see Michelle Malkin wrote a column on the 1095 problem:

Tax season is stressful enough. But if you are like countless miserable Americans trapped in the Obamacare 1095-A abyss, it’s hell on stilts on a Segway teetering over the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.

The screw-ups, incompetence and bureaucratic blame avoidance over the health insurance exchange tax forms make the healthcare.gov website fiasco look like a flawless product launch. How do I know? My family inexplicably got ensnared in the 1095-A paperwork pit. It’s a government roach motel: Taxpayers check in, but they can never check out.

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Somewhere along the way, the worker bees at Connect for Health Colorado dragooned us into an Obamacare exchange plan offered by Rocky Mountain Health without our knowledge or consent. (How else has the White House inflated Obamacare enrollment figures? Things that make you go “hmm.”) Last month, we received an IRS 1095-A form, which, much to our shock and chagrin, indicated that we had paid Obamacare premiums every month during 2014.

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The saga continues. We were finally able to un-enroll after being auto-enrolled in the Obamacare plan. Then, after being bounced around by the state government health exchange to various voicemail dead ends and back, with hours of migraine-inducing, on-hold music in between, we were told there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the 1095-A form — which shows payment of premiums we didn’t pay to an Obamacare plan we never enrolled in and didn’t want in the first place!
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The costs in time, money and anxiety to hardworking families dealing with this paperwork perdition are enormous. Unknown numbers of people are still waiting for their forms as the April 15 tax-filing deadline looms. More face the added expense and aggravation of filing amended returns through no fault of their own.

Where’s the rest of the media — most of whom have been insulated from these problems because they get their health insurance through their employers?

Indeed.

Maybe there will be an uptick in Obamacare tax stories, once more important news, like March Madness and Obama’s bracket, are finished with.