Awesome

[brianwspencer]

Honu -- to be honest, I did exactly what you said we should do and looked up the bill, and it says nothing at all about everyone paying taxes on their employer's contributions to their healthcare plans.

Where did the last paragraph in your post come from?

On CRS summary, the only mention of W-2s in the bill says this:

Amends the Internal Revenue Code to impose an excise tax of 40% of the excess benefit from certain high cost employer-sponsored health coverage. Deems any amount which exceeds payment of $8,500 for an employee self-only coverage plan and $23,000 for employees with other than self-only coverage (family plans) as an excess benefit. Increases such amounts for certain retirees and employees who are engaged in high-risk professions (e.g., law enforcement officers, emergency medical first responders, or longshore workers). Imposes a penalty on employers and coverage providers for failure to calculate the proper amount of an excess benefit.

(Sec. 9002) Requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer-sponsored group health coverage that is excludable from the employee's gross income (excluding the value of contributions to flexible spending arrangements).

To me, and I'm totally okay being wrong if someone has better info than what I gleaned from reading this -- that says that the so-called "Cadillac" plans will be taxed at 40% at anything over $8,000/yr. It's okay if you have a problem with that, but that's not news, everyone knew that was going to happen.

$8,000/yr is an awful lot of money, and it won't affect very many people is my best guess. My old employer had EXCELLENT health insurance that covered basically everything with no deductible, and they only contributed about $5,000/yr to it....

So like I said, it's okay to have a problem with that, but your post makes it sound like every American with employer-sponsored health insurance is going to start paying income taxes on the employer's contributions, which as far as I can tell, is 100% false, if I've read the above provisions correctly, as it simply says that the value of those contributions will be noted on the W-2, *not* included in the gross earnings -- as obviously it would have to be noted on a W-2 in order to determine who qualified for the excess tax listed above...they can't just guess.

At least, I hope I'm right.