CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
If the doo-doo really hits the air-conditioning but humanity survives, it'll survive (at least) in Africa. (Or at least any successor species.) Genus Homo's been through a lot there and survived it all.
Ladewig
I lost an avatar bet.
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2001
- Messages
- 28,828
I had that for a while, but then my company offered insurance for part-time employees and I became ineligible for the state uninsurable/high-risk insurance pool. Unfortunately the company's insurance consists of $600/year premiums that cover 80% of costs up to $1000. Oh, and all pre-existing conditions are permanently exempted. I've been meaning to write the company president and tell him how f'ed over I am with this new "benefit."
Is the USA deduction system very different from the UKs? In the UK you can deduct (as a person) legitimate business expenses and depending on your job and employment status these can include something like car payments (for instance a contracted courier driver may be able to set at least some of their van re-payments against their tax liability).
This article helps explain the difference between how a business and an employee can handle medical expenses on their USA federal income tax return.
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/smallbusiness/wpn-2-20040305HowToDeductMedicalExpensesAPrimerForTheSelfEmployed.html
For anyone who does not get health insurance as a benefit, it might pay to see if your employer will hire you on a corp to corp basis. Computer programmers tend to be able to do this. I understand that Nolo
http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/1745D9A3-D50D-4AAD-BFB3ED609A4EE3F5/111/
books are about as painless as you can get on that subject.
For people who work in other areas its sometimes difficult to get the IRS to agree that you have self-employed status regardless of what you can negotiate with your employer or uh main client. One way to get around this may be to instead work part-time for at least 3 companies. Of course anything I say has to be double-checked and you all know what free advice is worth.
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/smallbusiness/wpn-2-20040305HowToDeductMedicalExpensesAPrimerForTheSelfEmployed.html
For anyone who does not get health insurance as a benefit, it might pay to see if your employer will hire you on a corp to corp basis. Computer programmers tend to be able to do this. I understand that Nolo
http://www.nolo.com/resource.cfm/catID/1745D9A3-D50D-4AAD-BFB3ED609A4EE3F5/111/
books are about as painless as you can get on that subject.
For people who work in other areas its sometimes difficult to get the IRS to agree that you have self-employed status regardless of what you can negotiate with your employer or uh main client. One way to get around this may be to instead work part-time for at least 3 companies. Of course anything I say has to be double-checked and you all know what free advice is worth.
The Central Scrutinizer
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2001
- Messages
- 53,097
Yes, if you are self-employed. But I think we are discussing people who are employed by someone, but have to provide their own health insurance.
Tax deductions, credits and adjustments to income, etc. are one of the top tools for the President and Congress to manipulate the USA economy and help reach goals that they decide (with the help of lobbyists and active citizens of course) are in the nation's interest. So I don't think it will be going away anytime soon.
Want people to buy houses and save money for retirement? Make interest on mortgage payments deductible, set up the tax return so people can postpone the taxes paid on their (deferred) income put into retirement savings.
Want to reduce people's dependence on gasoline? Give them tax credits if they buy a car with a flex-fuel engine (aka hybrid vehicle).
Want companies to reinvest in their building, machines, etc? No problem -- increase the tax credits.
Want more people to have health insurance? Make the premiums tax deductible!
(Currently they are only deductible if as part of your medical expenses they exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income (AGI). The first 7.5% of your medical expenses are not deductible.) Now why is it in most people's interest to have most of their fellow citizens covered by health insurance? Well, one reason would be that not having health insurance is an excellent way to go bankrupt. Besides being very unpleasant for the person who goes bankrupt, it is not in that person's family or the people he does business with interests either. Have enough people go bankrupt it becomes a sad state of affairs for their community also. My understanding is that that insurance tends to work best if you have a large pool of people in the pool being covered. That pool is being decreased, and given what the costs of medical care are -- that is putting more people at risk of financial disaster This is really not in the country's economic interest.
And it looks like the politicians are becoming concerned about that and this will have an effect on our future tax rules in 2007:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/24/AR2006012401838.html
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CS, I think you read that sentence out of context of the post and the thread.
Most of the thread has been about pharmaceutical companies, but even so some of the various disadvantages of the current USA health insurance system have been listed. But here's another quick list all in one place for your reading convenience:
The inefficiency of the USA system makes health insurance more expensive in this country compared to other industrialized countries that have a single-payer system.
It is more difficult for individuals to obtain health insurance in this country at a price they can afford if they cannot or prefer not to be an employee of a large company or the government.
This leads to job-lock and creates additional hurdles to people starting their own businesses.
Some people can't get health insurance at all -- diabetics for example.
Also see Ladewig post #117.
Because it's difficult for some people to get health insurance, they don't. This sharply increases their risk of bankruptcy.
It’s a contributory reason for people to have a harder time to get a job if they are over 40 or are visibly handicapped. As certain types of prostheses become more common (cochlear implants, eye implants, etc.) and also gene therapy becomes more common the tendency for small and medium size companies with health benefits to not hire older people or the visibly handicapped out of fear of sharply increasing their premiums for health care will probably become more prevalent.
It removes choice from the direct consumers of health care; the people who make the choices are all in Human resources or on the Board of Directors. This is just wrong.
It decreases the likelihood that someone can have continuity of care under the same physician.
It is common for people who are in between jobs and paying for insurance through COBRA to get very dissatisfactory customer service from the health insurance companies. (Uh, even more so then ususal.)
Because many people don't want anything on their records that might reduce their chances of getting health care in the future, they don't feel free to participate in medical studies (e.g. genetic studies).
Some people who think its likely that they will be self-employed will not get mental health care, or if they do will only pay for it out of pocket. A record of seeking mental health care can easily double ones premiums when purchasing an individual policy.
Lack of privacy especially in smaller companies. One can't purchase a flex-spending plan directly from a health insurance company but has to do so from their employers. Trivial example: When I graduated to bifocals and decided to get the ones with invisible bifocal lines and indestructible frames -- the office manager of the computer software consulting firm I worked for decided to tell all his buddies exactly how much I spent. Trivial, but many people may have medical expenses that they don't necc. want to share with their co-workers at the office. If Jones wants to build a wheelchair ramp for his grandma or loop his own office (this relates to ALDs for hearing aids) for his moonlighting activities is it any of his co-workers' business?
Why shouldn't everyone have the opportunity to purchase a flex-spending plan? (Non-Americans -- this is a half-assed way that some Americans can pay for their health care expenses with pre-taxed dollars, if their employers offer them this benefit. It's typically used for medical expenses that are not covered by a health insurance plan (eyeglasses, etc.). If Americans could simply deduct their health care expenses on their tax return it would not be necc. To use the flex-spending plan, typically one must estimate what their following year medical expenses will be in the fall before and then file the paperwork with human resources. Lowball the expenses -- you end up paying too much income tax. Highball the expenses -- the insurance company (who manages the flex-spending plan) gets to keep all of the extra money. A truly dumb system, very unfair to the taxpayer and just more corporate welfare for the insurance companies.) Better yet, why shouldn't everyone just have the opportunity to deduct his or her medical expenses directly on their tax return?
I have to go -- perhaps I'll write more later.
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What a joke, except its not funny when it happens in real life. Have you considered writing to your State Assembly member instead?
(and in post #117)
Ladewig said:
It is probably too difficult to lobby for a one-payer system -- but in NY for example they are allowing some peope to buy into the Medicaid* system. Since you and others can't buy individual policies at any cost, perhaps you could ask your SA to expand Medicaid to your group as well.
Another option is to lobby for your state to require health insurance companies to sell insurance to anybody and base the preumiums on the average health costs on people in your state or something like that.
This would be considered a small change and have a high PR value for your SA member and his peers.
I realize that my post may sound very pie-in-the-sky and unrealistic. However, I have friends that have lobbied for small changes in their state laws and were able to get some of what the wanted passed into law. On average, they were able to do this within 5 years.
Its a pain in the neck, but with a lot of people involved the work can be spread around. They organized around exisiting hard of hearing groups. There are groups that already exist for people who can't get health insurance -- groups for diabetics for example.
Anyway, just a thought.
* Reason I said Medicaid instead of Medicare is because my understanding is that the former is affected by state laws and the later by federal laws. Its usually easier to get small changes effected on the state than federal level.
I don't think the purpose of the tax code should be to manipulate behavior.
I took a Federal Tax course in college. This purpose was one of the very first things my professor talked about on the first day of class. Of course I think he used the phrase encourage or provide incentive rather than "manipulate".
But whatever, he did say it came right after raising revenue for the government as the reason to have a tax code.Rhetorical question (== I know its off topic and you don't have to answer
) : It makes a big difference what the majority of people decide to do. What's wrong with using a carrot approach to entice them to do things that in the aggregate will have a very beneficial effect on the country's economy or socially? (E.g., for various reasons most communities prefer it when people buy vs. rent their homes.)
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