Posted on 05/17/2010 10:59:18 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Pres. Barack Obama promised Americans “health-care reform.” So far, “health-care form” is more like it.
Obamacare is devolving into the Paper Industry Salvation Act of 2010. This new law spans 2,562 tree-killing pages. Far worse, it will force Americans to spend countless irritating hours completing, transmitting, and filing endless reams of federal paperwork.
The scariest news for America’s forests may be a brand-new mandate that will compel each business — from General Electric to the neighborhood handyman — to file an IRS Form 1099 for every business on which it spends at least $600. Form 1099 today applies only to independent contractors, e.g. a graphic artist who earns $1,000 for designing a sales brochure. Come 2012, Obamacare will vastly expand 1099s to sellers of goods as well as services, and not just the self-employed, but also businesses — large and small.
“This will create a twofold whammy for small businesses,” predicts Rep. Dan Lungren (R., Calif.), who is sponsoring legislation to repeal this provision. “They will have additional accounting costs that will consume time and money,” Lungren tells me. “They will be required to keep a running tab with every vendor, all the way from restaurants to anything they buy — a piece of equipment, an airline ticket, or a hotel room. And when they reach the $600 threshold, they will be required to file 1099s for each of those vendors.”
“Second,” Lungren adds, “small companies most likely will see less business. Most people will streamline this process by moving to large vendors. Why go to your local hardware stores, since you will have to keep track of several tabs? Why not go to one big-box store? As for restaurants, why not go to the chain rather than local restaurants?”
An independent contractor, for instance, will find it easier to consolidate his purchases and send one 1099 to Home Depot, rather than sprinkle his spending among smaller outlets, track those expenditures, and then submit multiple 1099s for Joe’s Ladder Company, Hammers-R-Us, Kaminstein Bros. Paints, and Wally’s Wallpaper Warehouse.
“On average, small businesses spend more than $74 per hour on meeting their compliance obligations, which represents the most expensive paperwork burden that the federal government imposes on small-business owners,” states Brad Close of the National Federation of Independent Business. Imagine that a small company sacrifices the equivalent of just two hours each month to perform these calculations and file 1099s at tax season. Every year, this would cost — get this — $1,776.
Many struggling businesses would waste even more money on this fresh headache. Every dollar spent to spew out 1099s is one less dollar that could pay new employees, train existing staffers, or develop new products, services, and markets.
In perhaps the most surreal aspect of this idiotic new drag on the economy, the IRS has yet to write the specific regulations to govern this measure. It is waiting for guidance from none other than the secretary of health and human services.
What does this ticker-tape parade of paperwork have to do with overhauling the U.S. health-care system? Yet again, here comes Uncle Dracula to suck every corpuscle of blood from any available taxpayer to finance Obamacare. Over ten years, this measure would extract $17 billion from the jugulars of America’s already anemic small businesses.
Atop this, the Galen Institute’s Grace-Marie Turner reports that Obamacare will require employers to evaluate their health plans’ affordability by calculating each employee’s household income, not just that worker’s individual wages. This likely will involve, at a minimum, collecting income declarations from every staff member.
Even more paper will fly as employers investigate whether their employees have oxymoronic adult children between ages 18 and 26. If so, companies must determine whether these “kids” carry their own health insurance or remain on their parents’ plans.
Congress should halt this growing misery and repeal Obamacare. If not, it should launch a new program to treat paper cuts.
— Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.
You are (expletive deleted) me.
What possible purpose is this insanity for?
Who can possibly keep accurate records such as this?
The purpose is to drive small business out of business. Make doing business so burdensome and expensive, and then more businesses go out of business. And then the left says it’s capitalism’s fault.
Since none of the people now in charge have ever run a business, they really don’t care about the cost of compliance for the rules they make up. They simply do not understand, nor do they even think is these terms, that the reason a person goes into businees is to make a profit...not to fill out some government form. And the item about reporting my spouse’s income to MY employer, Holy Moly, how many terabytes of space are in this website so I can comment on that?
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water of red tape...
From the Contract From America: Enact Fundamental Tax Reform
Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words—the length of the original Constitution.
“Make doing business so burdensome and expensive, and then more businesses go out of business.”
Or, we there will be a thriving underground economy. Maybe when running a government becomes government becomes too burdensome and expensive, the government will go out of business.
The solution is NA. Just mark a big Sharpie Red “ N/A “on the form and let er fly
No problem. Obozo’s “mentor” is Bill Ayers, who was into civil disobedience in a big way during the 60’s and 70’s.
My turn now, heh-heh.
“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.” - Ayn Rand, ‘Atlas Shrugged’ 1957
Rand was a prophet.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2483898/posts
It was here 1st before Cato and NRO....
Sounds like it might be a 4th Amendment violation.
IMHO it is the framework for a VAT..
They want no cash flow going untouched, the theives they are want to control everything including the "underground" economy, they can due so by watching the flow of every dollar....
Another guess on my part is they want no small business to own assets like a boat, etc and call it a company asset....
Take that, tree lovers.
I won’t be participating in this - thanks anyway.
this IS the nail in the coffin of the American small business job machine...
if ya don’t do what the thugs want ya to do down at Tammany Hall..they’ll have Rocco come visit ya..
This is the GS level 14 promotion act...paid for by you and I!!!
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