It is unfair that people who work for companies that offer health care benefits get those benefits without any taxes being owed on that money. In other words, the out of pocket expense incurred by the employee (to match employer payments) comes out of the paycheck before taxes. That means there is less income for the government to tax.
That may not last. President Obama is working hard to push through health care legislation that will offer broader coverage to Americans. One of the ways that is being considered to pay for these new health plans is to tax those people who have employer provided benefits.
It may not seem fair that some people get a tax deduction that others do not get, but there are plenty of those to go around. If the government is going to tax health benefits of those that currently have coverage in order to provide coverage to those that do not have (or do not want) coverage then what is next?
The plan that Obama is putting forth seems nice in words but it is important that Americans read the fine print. A trillion dollars is not peanuts and once the payments start coming they will have to continue and will also increase.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:26 am
To be clear, what they are talking about is the portion of our employer provided health care insurance that the employer pays. For example, I pay about $2400 a year in premiums. This doesn’t include co-pays. But my employer subsidizes this, and the share they pay is about $12K.
The proposed (not officially proposed, but discussed) change would be for that benefit to be taxed. Now, whether it’s taxed at the same rate as your income, or at some other rate is as yet undetermined.
Frankly, though it would perhaps cost me an additional 3K in taxes, if it meant everyone got the access to the level of medical care that I do, I’ll be happy to pay it.