52 percent of ObamaCare enrollees will have to pay $530 to IRS


A report from tax preparation firm H&R Block suggests that tax season may be especially gnarly for lower-income ObamaCare enrollees:
[H&R Block] is seeing a majority (52 percent) who enrolled in insurance via the state or federal Marketplaces paying back a portion of the Advance Premium Tax Credit (APTC). The average amount paid back is $530, decreasing the tax refund on average by 17 percent, according to analysis almost six weeks into the 2015 tax season. [H&R Block]
The report also notes that uninsured taxpayers are paying an average penalty of $172, which is significantly higher than the $95 flat fee many anticipated. This bad news comes on top of the recent story that some 800,000 people received the wrong ObamaCare subsidy tax form from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit devoted to simplifying and lowering taxes, has a more thorough explanation of that $530 figure here.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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