Something which cannot be stated often enough is the breadth and depth of ObamaCare©'s job-killing nature. Health insurance is a big-ticket item for many (most?) small businesses, and it's about to get worse. In just a few short years, the new ObamaTaxes© come online; these will add upwards of $90 billion in additional excise taxes on insurers.
Oh, wait: did I say "on insurers?"
I meant "on thee and me:" insurers (like all businesses) don't pay taxes, they simply collect them from their customers.
In this case, the initial ObamaTax©, set to take effect in 2014, sets the bar at $8 billion; that number increases to $14.3 billion four years later. It's actually worse than this; Sally Pipes, writing at Forbes, notes that:
"Because these new fees are not tax-deductible for insurers, each additional premium dollar raised to pay the excise tax will face 35 cents in income taxes. So the true cost of the excise tax to insurers is nearly $135 billion. They'll therefore have to jack up prices by $1.54 to generate one buck for the excise tax. And in states with income or premium taxes of their own, insurers will face an ever steeper bill."
Is there hope for change? A consortium of small business advocates thinks there is; they've put together a very useful website chronicling all the various taxes to which their members (and thus us consumers) will be subject. Called Stop The Hit, it's got a state-by-state breakdown of both the scheduled ObamaTaxes© and the percentage of small business-generated jobs.
As the site notes:
"One thing insurers and economists have agreed upon throughout the healthcare debate: new taxes on insurers inevitably means new costs passed along to customers. The group that experiences the most cost-shifting is the fully-insured market."
No kidding.
Oh, wait: did I say "on insurers?"
I meant "on thee and me:" insurers (like all businesses) don't pay taxes, they simply collect them from their customers.
In this case, the initial ObamaTax©, set to take effect in 2014, sets the bar at $8 billion; that number increases to $14.3 billion four years later. It's actually worse than this; Sally Pipes, writing at Forbes, notes that:
"Because these new fees are not tax-deductible for insurers, each additional premium dollar raised to pay the excise tax will face 35 cents in income taxes. So the true cost of the excise tax to insurers is nearly $135 billion. They'll therefore have to jack up prices by $1.54 to generate one buck for the excise tax. And in states with income or premium taxes of their own, insurers will face an ever steeper bill."
Is there hope for change? A consortium of small business advocates thinks there is; they've put together a very useful website chronicling all the various taxes to which their members (and thus us consumers) will be subject. Called Stop The Hit, it's got a state-by-state breakdown of both the scheduled ObamaTaxes© and the percentage of small business-generated jobs.
As the site notes:
"One thing insurers and economists have agreed upon throughout the healthcare debate: new taxes on insurers inevitably means new costs passed along to customers. The group that experiences the most cost-shifting is the fully-insured market."
No kidding.
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