Obamacare’s limbo befuddles taxpayers

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Politico:

Republicans’ stalled campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act is sowing confusion among those now trying to do their taxes.

 

Many taxpayers believe Republicans have already repealed the law, tax preparers say, and they’re surprised and upset to learn they are still subject to Obamacare’s penalty for failing to have health insurance — a charge that climbed this year to more than $2,000 per family.

 

President Donald Trump’s recent executive order targeting the law has only added to the confusion, some practitioners say. It ordered federal agencies to do what they can to ratchet back the law and, in response, the IRS said it would not automatically reject returns that fail to indicate whether the filer had health insurance for all of the previous year.

 

Some have interpreted that as a green light to ignore the law’s individual mandate, and Intuit, maker of the popular TurboTax, is now updating its software to allow users to file their returns without answering Line 61, which asks about coverage.

 

But many experts complain that neither the executive order nor the subsequent announcement by the IRS actually changed the Obamacare insurance requirement.

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Muddling through repeal.