Free Republic

Happy New Year, suckers That “affordable” health care the Democrats gave us in 2010 - on a reconciliation vote when none of them had read the entire 2,000-plus-page bill - sure keeps getting harder to afford. Of course, since ObamaCare is an unconstitutional mandate on individuals to purchase a product offered by private companies, it’s also quite difficult to afford not buying it - even though the product itself continues to devolve further into craptasm. Welcome to 2016, where the penalty you’ll face for not buying a product that’s now a bigger ripoff than ever will explode as follows:

Publicly released records show that embattled former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman visited the White House at least 157 times during the Obama administration, more recorded visits than even the most trusted members of the president’s Cabinet.

The gloves are coming off. We're 11 months from full implementation and the real-world impact of Obamacare is hitting the newswires. Taco Bell and Wendy's just cut the hours of hundreds of employees to avoid the Obamacare employer health insurance mandate. These workers will not only not have health insurance, they will have less money to pay for it and may be forced into Medicaid under the individual mandate. Now, the Internal Revenue Service is warning employers not to avoid the employer mandate. The IRS issued a 144-page notice which says they will soon issue proposed regulations with "anti-abuse rules."...

The House Committee on Ways and Means has compiled an estimate of the total amount of hours it will take to comply with the taxes contained in Obamacare. Based on IRS estimates, it will take nearly 80 million hours for families and businesses to comply with Obamacare taxes. To put this in perspective, according to Ways and Means, it is the equivalent of the Empire State Building being constructed 11 times, a building which took 7 million man-hours to build. To make matters worse, Ways and Means has concluded that over half of the burden of tax compliance for Obamacare...

On September 11, 2012, IRS Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement Steven Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee about the IRS' implementation of Obamacare. One part of his testimony was actually fairly amusing: The IRS conducted an extensive outreach and implementation program for the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit. Shortly after the ACA [Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare] was passed, the IRS determined the necessary steps to both implement the credit and track these efforts. The IRS conducted significant outreach, communication, and educational activities to inform small businesses and tax professionals about the credit. We created...

The written testimony that Jonathan Adler and I submitted for the House Oversight Committee hearing on the Internal Revenue Service’s unlawful attempt to increase taxes and spending under Obamacare is now online. An excerpt: Contrary to the clear language of the statute and congressional intent, this [IRS] rule issues tax credits in health insurance “exchanges” established by the federal government. It thus triggers a $2,000-per-employee tax on employers and appropriates billions of dollars to private health insurance companies in states with a federal Exchange, also contrary to the clear language of the statute and congressional intent. Since those illegal expenditures will exceed...

When President Obama's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, aka "Obamacare") goes fully into effect in 2014, the American people will only then begin to see the implications of its thorough government takeover of health care, in all its glory. But what they are not expecting is the massively expanded role of the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") in our lives, as the IRS is the chief agency responsible for enforcing the Act.That is explained in a new paper by Dan Pilla, just published by the Heartland Institute, "Implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Pilla is a tax...

The Tatler has learned that Obamacare government auditing of American society has begun at the Internal Revenue Service. New details about the IRS budget were released this afternoon by Senator John Barrasso (who also is an MD). Quoting from the IRS budget document, he reveals that for the IRS, ObamaCare “represents the largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years, with more than 40 provisions that amend the tax laws.” More than $93 million has been budgeted by the IRS to assure that the public complies with the new tax rules. Among other new IRS activities, the...