Patient Protection Affordable Care Act comprises myriad sections of law. The waivers exclude favored entities from the requirements of a few sections (or parts of sections). They do not guarantee categorical exclusion from the entire law. Secretary of Health and Human Services statutorily can waive this particular tax requirement if she judges that the politically connected applicant would experience a particular hardship, but insofar as I know, she has not issued any such waivers of this requirement. Remember, this tax section imposes a particularly regressive penalty on the working poor. It does not punish lack of health insurance; it punishes INCOME, particularly income generated from work that does not provide health insurance. It hits the working poor especially hard: the tax on a full-time, year-round minimum-wage income ($15,020/year) for a family (two married adults and two or more children OR a head-of-household and four or more children) is $2,085/year (in and after 2016). That tax applies in addition to other income taxes: regular income taxes, state income taxes, local income taxes, Federal Insurance contribution income taxes, Medicare income taxes, et cetera. Congress specifically designed this income tax is intended to penalize such families if they choose to work and thereby induce them to enroll in welfare programs.
The act does provide for an exclusion for taxation if health insurance is not affordable, but the monthly premium must exceed 8% of annual “modified adjusted gross income” for the household; effectively, the insurance premium for EACH individual in the household must cost more than 96% of pre-tax income for the entire household (including employee benefits).
Patient Protection Affordable Care Act comprises myriad sections of law. The waivers exclude favored entities from the requirements of a few sections (or parts of sections). They do not guarantee categorical exclusion from the entire law. Secretary of Health and Human Services statutorily can waive this particular tax requirement if she judges that the politically connected applicant would experience a particular hardship, but insofar as I know, she has not issued any such waivers of this requirement. Remember, this tax section imposes a particularly regressive penalty on the working poor. It does not punish lack of health insurance; it punishes INCOME, particularly income generated from work that does not provide health insurance. It hits the working poor especially hard: the tax on a full-time, year-round minimum-wage income ($15,020/year) for a family (two married adults and two or more children OR a head-of-household and four or more children) is $2,085/year (in and after 2016). That tax applies in addition to other income taxes: regular income taxes, state income taxes, local income taxes, Federal Insurance contribution income taxes, Medicare income taxes, et cetera. Congress specifically designed this income tax is intended to penalize such families if they choose to work and thereby induce them to enroll in welfare programs.
The act does provide for an exclusion for taxation if health insurance is not affordable, but the monthly premium must exceed 8% of annual income for the household; effectively, the insurance premium for EACH individual in the household must cost more than 96% of pre-tax income for the entire household (including employee benefits).