Get ready for IRS to enforce Obamacare

Before the massive national health care bill was passed earlier this year, it became known that the enforcement arm of this bill would be the Internal Revenue Service. It was estimated that the IRS would have to hire at least another 16,500 agents to see that businesses and individuals comply with the mandatory provisions of this bill. These are more jobs created that the Obama administration can take credit for. Government employment is the fastest growing sector of our nation's workforce and this is just another example. Yet to be seen is whether the IRS information systems will be able to manage and track all the additional data needed to be gathered.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson operates inside the IRS and noted in her annual report to Congress two weeks ago that the agency is already "greatly taxed by the additional role it is playing in delivering social benefits and programs to the American public." The IRS has been tasked with keeping track of things like first-time homebuyers and electric car purchases. Now with Obamacare, the IRS is responsible for "the most extensive social benefit program the IRS has been asked to implement in recent history," says Olson. Without "sufficient funding" it won't be able to handle these new duties.

Note that "sufficient funding" means more of our tax dollars going to staff more IRS agents who will be tasked with keeping close tabs on us to see that we all comply with the mandates of national health care. So the government will grow larger and spend more money to implement this unpopular health care bill. Didn't our president tell us that this health care bill would not add another dime to the federal deficit? During his campaign didn't he tell us that he was going to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans? Maybe he plans to make up the difference in health care fines.

New duties expected of IRS agents include audits to determine who has the insurance "as required by law" and collecting penalties from those of us who don't. Companies that don't sponsor health care plans will be punished. This crackdown will "involve nearly every division and function of the IRS," Olson says. The IRS says it hasn't figured out how much extra money and manpower it will need, but admits that both figures are greater than zero.

Olson also revealed a damaging provision of the bill that she estimates will affect some 30 million sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations, two million farms and one million charities and other tax-exempt organizations. Before Obamacare, businesses only had to tell the IRS the value of services they purchase. However, starting in 2013 they will also have to report the value of goods they buy from a single vendor that total more than $600 annually, to include office supplies and the like.

This obligation was inserted in the one-party bill to narrow the so-called mythical tax gap of unreported business income. Olson maintains that the tracking for small businesses will be "disproportionate as compared with any resulting improvement in tax compliance." Last Monday, four Democratic senators who voted for the bill denounced this new "burden" on small businesses and insisted that the IRS use its discretion to find "better ways to structure this reporting requirement."

So, now Sens. Mark Begich-AK, Ben Nelson-NE, Jeanne Shaheen-NH and Evan Bayh-IN want regulators to fix one problem among many that all four created by voting for Obamacare. And Nelson never did get his special deal he was promised for the Cornhusker state in return for his healthcare vote. But, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said, we have to pass the bill so we can find out what is in it. The more we find out about it, the less appealing it becomes.

It's certainly no comfort knowing that compassionate IRS agents are in charge of health care enforcement.