Amy Goldstein for the Washington Post writes: In May 2012, when the Internal Revenue Service proposed its rules for Americans to get government subsidies for health insurance, officials acknowledged that a legal quirk needed to be fixed: The Affordable Care Act was written in a way that inadvertently denied such help to some people who live apart from spouses who abuse them, are in prison or are on the cusp of a divorce.
The problem is that the law’s authors, in creating tax credits to help pay for health plans bought through the new insurance marketplaces, had overlooked the fact that some married people file their tax returns separately.
The IRS said in the preamble to those 2012 rules that it would correct the mistake, yet in the nearly two years since then, the Treasury Department has not made the change. And battered spouses have become the leading edge of a small army of people — legally married but filing taxes on their own — stepping up pressure in an effort to get an equal chance at affordable health plans.
As the first open-enrollment period for the new federal and state insurance marketplaces approaches its March 31 deadline, Treasury is preparing to take steps early this week to allow married survivors of domestic abuse to claim subsidies for health plans, no matter how they file their taxes, according to a department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision is not yet public. Others who are married but filing separately won’t get relief for now. [snip] The article continues at the Washington Post, click here to continue reading.
0 comments:
Post a Comment