Health Care Thoughts: CPA Retirement Funding Act
by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt
Health Care Thoughts: CPA Retirement Funding Act
So I spent a part of the weekend reading summaries of the new IRS regs on the Obamacare 3.8% net investment income tax.
Holy complications Batman!
These rules are so complex and convoluted CPAs will spend their spare time reading yacht catalogs. Sure, the rules apply to high earners (although not that high, e.g. a two income professional couple may get whacked), but for those in the lofty category these rules are really really messy. There are lots of really difficult issues such as S-corp sales and what happens to real estate professionals.
This is not the way to finance a health care system , IMHO.
We can’t bring ourselves to nationalize the private insurance companies, so we let the tax lawyers and CPAs rig us a Rube Goldberg device instead.
rusty
in case there is any doubt, i agree with you.
I am glad I do not have to design forms or program tax prep software this year – total nightmare.
There’s always a reason for extreme complexity, especially in the area of taxation. In this case the complexity may be intended to hide duplicity or to simply scuttle the original intention, if there was one.
That’s also part of the problem with designating a specific kind of tax to cover a specific government cost. Why relate this special tax to health care for seniors and saddle it with the burden of a welfare character? The general budget has costs to be met. Revenues are required to fund those costs. Trying to match the streams is bound to cause disgruntlement and result in continuous efforts to eliminate the specific benefit cost by the “need to adjust” its specific revenue stream.