New Poor Tax

Just a quick hit and run here... Or maybe not...

The Healthcare reform bill is going to have fines associated with it. If your employer doesn't provide insurance and you can't get it at an affordable rate, you will be taxed an additional amount at the end of the year.

A family of 4 earning $66,000 / year, will be taxed an additional 3,910.

But this is stil cheaper than insurance. The insurance companies won't be required to provide you affordable insurance, but you're being told you must buy it anyway. So inruance costs may still run close to $1,000/ month per family member.

In 2001, when I went to CORBA, after being laid off, my insurance premiums were $500/ month. I'm told that's a bargain now. And even though I paid on time, I was ditched as soon as it ran out. Insurance corporations don't like to insure individuals, And when Obama's healthcare program kicks in, they won't have to.

You'll be required to buy insurance, but there is no guarantee that it will be made available to you.

As the Fed Desperately searches for ways to get more money out of the jobless and underemployed, I'm seeing the trend continue in local governments. Dallas Area Rapid Transit is raising fares another 50%. Much of the DART system is funded by local sales taxes and bond sales. With more and more people living on the edge, sales tax revenue is in decline.

My city newspaper published a glowing report of how the city is doing great financially, because of the way they think about budgets. And they have invented more innovative fees to cover declining revenue. These would be fees on top of the previous fees they invented. I guess they are discovering the age old lesson, that you can price the taxpayers out of markets.

Again, this fits in with the nutcase conpsiracy theory I had that in periods of decline the bulls in government will desperately find new ways to implement poor taxes, so they don't have to take a hit. And natural born politician is a perpetual bull. They can't sell a message in which economics has occasional downturns. They must always act as if every lottery ticket is a winner. They must insist that there are no downturns and when the find themselves in one, they must pretend it's temporary. A local councilwoman was quoted as saying that things will improve when the recession ends in two years. I suppose that's a 'feel good' number. I don't see any fundamentals in our economic situation that warrants such a quick turn around. I would expect to see a dramatic reduction in foreclosures and bankruptcies first. We have to quit pumping arterial blood through open wounds before we can declare the patient as recovering. So long as we are bleeding jobs at over a half million a month, talk of recovery is very premature.

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Addendum:
The Yahoo News article I read over the weekend has been hard to track down.
today I came across the CBS News Version, 'Congress Considers Fining the Uninsured'

American families would be fined up to $3,800 for failing to buy health insurance under a plan that circulated in Congress on Tuesday as divisions among Democrats undercut President Obama's effort to regain traction on his health care overhaul.

And is a fine, extracted by the Tax Man, anything other than a tax?