There is a new post on The Verdict Is In - "What's Up With The IRS?"

Sadly, we must conclude there is a bit of confusion surrounding the collection of money for ObamaCare. Last week the IRS officially announced it would not be involved in enforcing ObamaCare. Huh?! I thought the Obama Administration argued the mandate was a tax in front of SCOTUS. And this argument won the day. I recall the number of new agents for the IRS to enforce the collections would be 16,500. Looking around the 'Net, it is clear this number was thrown out willy-nilly by Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich during the Republican debates. OK - so that number was wrong. It was simply Ron being Ron and Newt being Newt. The more realistic number is somewhere between 4,100 and 5,500 new agents. When ObamaCare was signed into law, HHS was given $1 billion of non-specified money to spend where ever it deemed necessary. About half this money was allocated to the IRS to prepare for enforcement of the new health care law. This makes sense. After all, the raison d'etre for ObamaCare in the first place was that there were millions of freeloaders and slackers who milked off the health care system, but never bought insurance. So the IRS would make sure these all paid into the system. That is the heart of the mandate, which we now call a tax.

Then the facts began to change. It turns out the 30 million or 50 million (depending on who we read) uninsured are the working poor. People who can't get on Medicaid because they make too much. But they can't pay for insurance. Getting $700 out of them as an IRS penalty doesn't sound too realistic. Only 1% of the population are really slackers we are now told. Then last week this news item was released (9/11/12). For some reason, it has been totally ignored by most of the media.

"In what has come to be known as Obamacare, the controversial healthcare proposal by President Obama that requires all Americans to have health insurance, the IRS has officially stated that it is not involved in enforcing the rule. The law was passed in 2010 and states that all Americans must possess health/medical insurance by 2014. Failure to do so would result in a fine or a tax. The law also contains other provisions such as a levy on the wealthy to help pay for the coverage and the so-called individual mandate to tax credits for small businesses.

Since taxes are involved as part of ensuring compliance with the law’s requirements it is only logical that the IRS is the agency that collects the taxes. Opponents of the law have expressed their apprehension over how far the IRS would go to collect taxes from those who do not have health/medical insurance. Would the agency employ some of their ‘strong arm’ methods to get people to pay up, such as charging interest, carrying out audits etc?

In response to the opposition, Deputy IRS Commissioner, Steven Miller assured a subcommittee in the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives, “IRS revenue agents will not be involved (in enforcing the rule). There will not be audits." Looking at the extent of opposition to the hotly debated issue, the assurance by Deputy Commissioner Miller is a welcome development. Miller also said, “In most cases, taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and-or making a payment, and there will be no need for further interactions with the IRS."

The consequence of failure to have health/medical insurance is payment of an annual fee to the IRS of $95, or 1% of taxable household income starting in 2014. But this amount will rise by 2016 to $695 per person, with a maximum of the greater of $2,085 per family or 2.5% of household income. Under present circumstances, it is estimated that about 1% of the population does not have health/medical insurance and thus would be penalized when the law goes into effect in 2014."

We might ask, "What is going on?"