The Department of Health and Human Services is prescribing an extra dose of two of ObamaCare’s most bitter medicines for 2016.
The maximum deductible will rise to $6,850, up 3.8% from this year’s $6,600 ceiling and about 8% above 2014’s $6,350 limit.
Meanwhile, the penalty for employers that don’t offer coverage to most full-timers will rise a like amount to $2,160 per employee, up from this year’s $2,080 fine. The original $2,000 fine never applied, because it was bumped up a notch after a year’s delay.
The majority (52 percent) of Obamacare enrollees receiving an advance premium tax credit to purchase Obamacare insurance is facing the prospect of paying back $530 of that tax credit to the IRS, according to a new study from H&R Block. This clawback is reducing the refunds for these taxpayers by 17 percent this filing season.
Under Obamacare, taxpayers earning between 133 and 400 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible to receive a tax credit to help purchase insurance on Obamacare exchanges. This tax credit is calculated using old tax data of the recipients. The credit is advanced ahead of time to the taxpayer’s insurance company. The taxpayer must reconcile at tax time the advance credit received with the actual credit she is eligible for.