Roughly 80,000 Obamacare customers still need to get their new tax forms to replace botched forms previously distributed by the Obama administration, with Tax Day just a few weeks away.
The administration accidentally sent an incorrect tax form to 820,000 customers of Obamacare. Of those, 741,000 have received corrected forms and the rest will get a new form either electronically or in the mail in the next week, officials said in a call with reporters Friday.
Taxpayers affected by the botched forms will not get an extension to file their returns beyond the April 15 deadline, said Mark Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy at Treasury on the call. He did note that the administration could change its mind closer to the deadline.
Taxpayers can get an automatic six-month extension to filing their income tax return, but they must turn in paperwork before April 15 to do so.
The tax form 1095A is intended to determine whether a customer is eligible for tax credits and was sent to customers of the second-cheapest silver plan, one of three Obamacare plan options.
The problem was the form had an incorrect box that resulted in inaccurate calculations for how many subsidies a customer was supposed to get.
Of the roughly 820,000 that received the incorrect forms, about 50,000 already filed their returns. Some people got more money than they were supposed to, and some got less.
The Treasury Department has already said taxpayers that received more won’t have to give back any money.
Now people who got less will also not have to re-file their tax returns, however they can chose to do so if they want, Mazur said.
Officials attributed the error to a software coding issue.
This tax season represents the first time the healthcare law will be a factor. A majority of American taxpayers will only have to check on their tax form that they had health insurance through their employer in 2014 or face a penalty.
This year the government is basically taking citizens at their word that they have insurance through an employer. There is no employer reporting of insurance so the Internal Revenue Service won’t be able to match an individual’s statement against an employer’s records, Mazur said.
If a taxpayer is audited then they will have to prove that the information on their tax return is correct, he added.
