Massive new paperwork requirements
According to the tax law as it existed prior to ObamaCare, businesses had to fill out a 1099 form each time they conducted a transaction worth $600 or more with another business entity. ObamaCare changes that, and now a 1099 must be filed for expenditures of $600 or more IN THE ENTIRE YEAR.
This means that hundreds of thousands of businesses will have to start filing a huge number of 1099's for things such as rent and phone bills. It's a massive increase in paperwork that will be error-prone and do nothing but cause problems for businesses.
http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/health-care-bill-will-mandate-that-businesses-file-billions-of-additional-irs-1099-forms/
Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.
Why Waxman canceled the "writedown" hearings
Not long after Obama signed ObamaCare into law, many businesses started re-valuing their net worth downwards as a result of new burdens imposed by the law. Waxman (D) decided they were making it up, mainly because Democrats had been promising LOWER costs, not higher ones. So he scheduled hearings and demanded a flood of documents supporting the company's actions.
And he got those documents. After reading them, he canceled the hearings... saying that the documents showed the companies had complied with federal law. So his big side-show ended with a whimper. Is there more to it? Apparently so, yes. It seems that the internal documentation showed that costs would rise even higher, and that employers would benefit by NOT offering health insurance to employees.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/04/29/why-waxman-canceled-the-health
Publicly, Waxman said the investigation showed the companies’ disclosures were properly filed. But a new report from committee Republicans reveals the documents Waxman obtained included embarrassing evidence that the health-care law could drive up insurance premiums and force employers to dump employees from their health plans.
“Turns out Obamacare means if you like your health plan you can lose it. The president didn’t have to actually strong-arm companies into dumping their employee health insurance because his bill carried financial incentives to virtually guarantee that result,” Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Rep. Joe Barton, Texas Republican, said.
Most significantly, documents unearthed by the investigation highlight companies that are considering dumping employees from their current health-care plans in the face of new costs from the health-care law. President Obama repeatedly promised his health-care law would let Americans keep their current insurance if they’re happy with it.
A March 3 internal Verizon memo on the impact health-care law said new taxes on insurance companies and health-care equipment manufacturers will be passed onto employers through higher prices.
Facing such increased costs, employers like Verizon “may consider exiting the health-care market and send employees to the exchanges,” the memo says.
ObamaCare "Individual Mandate" in trouble
The defenders of the individual mandate originally said the "interstate commerce" clause gave Congress the power to force us to buy health insurance. Now they're shifted ground, claiming that it's a "tax," and Congress has the power to tax. Such a shift means they are unsure of their original arguments, and could be a foreshadowing of things to come.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704446704575206502199257916.html
A "tell" in poker is a subtle but detectable change in a player's behavior or demeanor that reveals clues about the player's assessment of his hand. Something similar has happened with regard to the insurance mandate at the core of last month's health reform legislation. Congress justified its authority to enact the mandate on the grounds that it is a regulation of commerce. But as this justification came under heavy constitutional fire, the mandate's defenders changed the argument—now claiming constitutional authority under Congress's power to tax.
This switch in constitutional theories is a tell: Defenders of the bill lack confidence in their commerce power theory. The switch also comes too late. When the mandate's constitutionality comes up for review as part of the state attorneys general lawsuit, the Supreme Court will not consider the penalty enforcing the mandate to be a tax because, in the provision that actually defines and imposes the mandate and penalty, Congress did not call it a tax and did not treat it as a tax.
So defenders of the mandate are making yet another unprecedented claim. Never before has the Court looked behind Congress's unconstitutional assertion of its commerce power to see if a measure could have been justified as a tax. For that matter, never before has a "tax" penalty been used to mandate, rather than discourage or prohibit, economic activity.
Are there now five justices willing to expand the commerce and tax powers of Congress where they have never gone before? Will the Court empower Congress to mandate any activity on the theory that a "decision" not to act somehow affects interstate commerce? Will the Court accept that Congress has the power to mandate any activity so long as it is included in the Internal Revenue Code and the IRS does the enforcing?
Yes, the smart money is always on the Court upholding an act of Congress. But given the hand Congress is now holding, I would not bet the farm.
So that's the latest on ObamaCare. Lovely can of worms our elected liberals have opened, isn't it?
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