Taxpayers will be able to apply for exemptions to Obamacare’s individual mandate on their tax returns for the 2018 coverage year, the Trump administration announced Wednesday.
The move is meant to make it easier for Americans to avoid the penalty for lacking health insurance. Last year’s tax law zeroed out the penalty for the individual mandate starting in 2019, but people who don’t have insurance coverage this year would still have to pay it.
“The penalty is still in effect,” Seema Verma, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “What we tried to do was make it easier for people to apply for a hardship exemption.”
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Before the change, taxpayers had to submit documentation to the administration to claim the exemption. Taxpayers without health insurance can get exemptions if they are low-income or had a qualifying life event like a recent job loss or suffering from a natural disaster.
If a taxpayer doesn’t have an exemption, he or she must pay the penalty for 2018, which is either $695 per person or 2.5 percent of income, whichever is higher.
With Wednesday’s announcement, taxpayers seeking exemptions for 2018 would just have to note it on their tax returns. They also would not have to submit documentation to prove the exemptions, but Verma said that the administration is advising taxpayers to keep their documentation in case of a follow up.
Verma said that allowing a taxpayer to claim an exemption on the tax return was already allowed for several groups, such as people who had access to Indian health services or residents in states that didn’t expand Medicaid. She said the goal is to expand that option for everyone.
Obamacare insurers have said that the loss of the mandate will cause them to raise premiums for next year on the exchanges because younger and healthier people will no longer have an incentive to sign up. This will cause the number of people on Obamacare’s risk pools to be sicker and thus more expensive.
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