http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/29/pf/taxes/health_insurance_mandate/

Well I feel a bit better after reading this, seems like the mandate has no penalty attached to it and that is explicitly written.

An excerpt
What happens if I don't pay the penalty? The IRS will send you a letter stating that you owe the government money.

"These are not the kinds of things ... that we send agents out about. These are things where you get a letter from us," Shulman said.

Failure to pay the penalty will not be treated as a crime.
"In the case of any failure by a taxpayer to timely pay any penalty imposed by this section, such taxpayer shall not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty with respect to such failure," according to the law.

The law also prohibits the government from putting liens or levies on your property to collect the penalty.

But based on Shulman's comments, it seems the government will be able to withhold your future refunds.

"We can actually do collection, if need be," he said. "People can get offsets of their tax returns in future years, so there's a variety of ways for us to focus on things like fraud, things like abuse."

What's not clear is whether failure to pay the penalty for not having insurance would subject you to late payment penalties to the IRS, much the same way a failure to pay your taxes on time would.

(Actually it states pretty clearly no penalty can be assessed for not paying.)

The public will not be given these details though to any significant degree and only those who search for the facts will know they don't even stand be penalized if they don't pay the penalty tax.

Also thought it was interesting that illegal immigrants are exempt from having to pay, well actually everyone is exempt but that is just symantics right?

When I saw it I could only laugh at the sly use of legalize and how it had a legion of mouth breathing racists confident they could finally discredit one of Obama's biggest legacies to date.

 When the "mandate" was first made known I wondered how a Harvard Law Graduate in Constitutional Law could have missed the "conflict". But when Lawrence O'Donnell showed the stipulations forbidding it being prosecuted as a "crime" or punishable under civil law I knew Obama had outsmarted em'.

in most cases, and because you can still buy insurance now after you sick, it makes sense for the young and healthy to pay the penalty until they get sick and then buy insurance.

       Seems to me the health insurance companies will really take it on the chin unless they can raise premiums for the sick high enough to cover their costs. Not paying the tax, however does not make any sense unless ACA also prohibits interest on the unpaid tax and precludes the credit companies from taking unpaid amounts into account. Otherwise you could end up with a hefty and growing bill after a few years, any income tax refund will be set off, and your credit is ruined

The mandate is an obsession by opponents of ACA, but it actually effects less than 1/10.  Most Republicans in the House are ignorant of this, and the ones who know will ignore it in their campaign to use the momentum of pandemic ignorance among the public to keep hysteria and frenzy at peak levels.  I'll try to explain briefly below why most people don't even face the mandate or a penalty tax.  This board reflects the frenzy over taxes, and the lack of understanding that less than 1/10 of you faces the mandate or penalty.

It was covered in this thread post:

http://www.theeroticreview.com/discussion_boards/viewMsg.asp?BoardID=39&Page=1&MessageID=177822


How the Mandate only Impacts 1/10 or less:

Most people get health insurance from employers, COBRA, Medicare, Medicaid,  so they aren't going to have to pay the tax.  They already are in compliance with the mandate. When CBO did those nearly weekedly analyses from Senate Finace they said that
80% of 272 million non-elderly people will satisfy the insurance requirement so they don't pay any tax.

That figure of 21 taxes you're alleging but don't name simply doesn't exist on planet earth.  You think a lot of people to read your statement quoting a ridiculous source the  Washington Examiner is going to be paid by most people.  That sounds like a Palin shriek.

Further there are a wide variety of exemptions for the 20% of people in this country who don't already satisfy the ACA insurance requirement.  Who is exempted? Religious groups, native Americans, immigrants without papers who aren't eligible whatever the figure 12 to 15 million,
people in jail, people with incomes so low they don't file or pay any taxes ($9500 for individuals and $19,000 married, people who can't afford insurance where cost is 8% of family income.

Estimates by MIT are 40% who are uninsured would be exempt from the mandate.  So what this means is that 9/10 or 90% of people who aren't elderly would either have insurance and not be subject to the mandate or tax for not complying with it.  So now we're down to 1/10 that either has to get insurance or pay the tax and not 21 frigging taxes but one tax since that's what Roberts' law clerk called it in the opinion because he did not want to expand the commerce clause although he left in language in opinion to let him do just that.  Roberts is very very very smart and one of the best lawyers over the last 20 years to argue cases in front of the S. Ct, and he did a beautiful job of upholding ACA and still satisfying his very conservative principles.


There are those who would say that if you have funds to hobby, you damn well have funds to buy insurance or contribute to your employer's plans.  I don't  expect to see Republican commercials that argue that hobbyists cannot afford health insurance because they have to keep up a level of hobbying style that they are accustomed to, and their families are behind them in this.  I don't believe also that the billionaire Super Pac funders will push for commercials that say this, but not much surprises me any more. Probably Conservative Family Values organizations will not rush to put up commercials along these lines.

Someone mentioned illegal immigrants, and they aren't eligible for the benefits of the  ACA, so they aren't subject to the mandate or the penalties.  They will continue to use emergency rooms driving up the cost of everyone's insurance and everyone's hospital charges and equipment charges as part of a hospital bill or device charges as part of a hospital or medical provider's bill.

But there has been so much focus and emphasis on the mandate because most people don't like to be told what to do even if in many cases, what you are told to do is better for you.

There also will be a campaign of ignorance and misinformation that is only going to be overcome by one thing--and that one thing will allow ACA to  sell it self and it's timing is totally ironic.  The ACA will be understood by the American public after it gets up and running which for  most of it's components is not until 2014.  Much has been discussed, but conservative democrats forced this delay based on GPO proojections in order to keep costs under a certain  level demanded by Blue Dog Democrats, Senate Finance Conservatives, and Democrats like Leiberman and Ben  Nelson who vote primarily with conservatives.  Fortunately Leiberman will be gone from the  Senate after January as will Nelson because both are retiring.

Quote:

The Right is saying that everyone would be taxed and that is just another big lie on their part. You will only be taxed if you don't buy health insurance on your own and it's not really a tax, but more of a tax penalty. It's just like the tax penalty one would get if they're not married, or don't have children, or don't own a home as apposed to those who get tax credits for them. And if you don't pay it, nothing will happen to you.


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