Avoid Obamacare penalty by “giving up” huge tax refund

This is hilarious, but not at all unexpected from the left-wing Politico. Paige Cunningham and Rachael Bade penned a post on Friday afternoon referring to a suggestion by Rush Limbaugh on how to avoid the Obamacare tax penalty if you don’t buy a health insurance policy.

Hat tip to Sweetness & Light who posted this morning, referencing the Politico piece with my emphasis.

Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh says he’s discovered a sure-fire way to skirt Obamacare’s penalties for failing to obtain health coverage next year – but you’d have to give up a fat tax refund.

The fine for failing to obtain insurance under the so-called “individual mandate,” which starts at $95 or one percent of taxable income next year, will automatically be collected by the IRS from tax refunds. But if you make sure you don’t get a refund, the agency won’t be able to collect the penalty, Limbaugh told listeners.

To be clear, to avoid the tax penalty, all you’d have to do is structure your withholding payments to ensure you owe the federal government a few dollars instead of getting a refund. If you are owed a refund of $50, they will take it all in a tax penalty. If you owe them $50 in federal taxes, just send them the $50, they will not come after you for the tax penalty.

Cunningham and Bade are off the wall. They seem to be two people who think getting a “fat tax refund” is a good thing. They are happy when they get a $2,400 refund check from the government in April or May. I’d get mad, simply because I could have had $200 extra per month in my own hands to spend or invest as I wish. Instead, Cunningham and Bade are perfectly happy providing the federal government an interest-free loan for a year.

It makes no sense to me. What’s disappointing is many of you out there don’t trust yourself with your own money … to the point where you are willing to hand it over to someone else to hold onto for a full year… interest free. If someone out there would like to do that … I’ll offer the service. Send me the money you think you’ll spend on frivolous stuff every couple of weeks, and I guarantee I’ll give you back whatever you gave me during the previous year. I’ll handle your burden.

Posted in ,

Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

3 Comments

  1. Dimsdale on October 28, 2013 at 9:45 am

    “What?s disappointing is many of you out there don?t trust yourself with your own money ? to the point where you are willing to hand it over to someone else to hold onto for a full year.”
    ?
    What is really disappointing is that they trust the government enough to wisely handle that money, interest free.? Just look at Connecticut’s unpaid public union retirement fund.? Why would anyone trust these people with money?? But then, “we” have been trained to put all of our trust in a Big Brother that cares about us.? ?bamacare is a case in point.? People still believe it can work, or is even designed to work, when written by healthcare illiterates.? It is a reflection of the dumbing down of America by an academia dominated by liberals.?
    ?
    Yeah, right.? I’ll trust them when monkeys fly out of my butt.
    ?
    ?



  2. Dimsdale on November 1, 2013 at 9:22 am

    Of course, in the interests of “fairly” confiscating more money for their failed plan, they will restore or grant unlimited power to the IRS and negate this “loophole”…



square-economy-money

The website's content and articles were migrated to a new framework in October 2023. You may see [shortcodes in brackets] that do not make any sense. Please ignore that stuff. We may fix it at some point, but we do not have the time now.

You'll also note comments migrated over may have misplaced question marks and missing spaces. All comments were migrated, but trackbacks may not show.

The site is not broken.