Two-thirds of ObamaCare subsidy recipients had to pay money back to the IRS

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

published 28 April 2015

While tax prep giant H&R Block initially estimated that half of ObamaCare (ACA) subsidy recipients would have to pay money back to the IRS, the final tally is even worse:

Almost two-thirds of tax filers who received insurance via the state or federal insurance marketplaces had to pay back an average of $729 of the Advance Premium Tax Credit (APTC), cutting their potential refund by almost one-third, according to analysis of filing data by H&R Block. [H&R Block]

The confusion has occurred because — on top of the complexity the ACA adds to the tax code — estimating income in advance to calculate how big an insurance subsidy should be is difficult for non-salaried workers. As Timothy Jost, a Washington and Lee University law professor, explains, "If you’re a person who is a waitress or worked for a landscape company and you're asked how much money you're going to make, you're really just throwing a dart at the board."

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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.