Author Topic: Obamacare’s ‘Cool Calculator,’ Part 2: The ‘Wedding Tax’  (Read 2150 times)

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Offline ABX

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Obamacare’s ‘Cool Calculator,’ Part 2: The ‘Wedding Tax’
« on: September 26, 2013, 02:53:49 am »
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The third tragic outcome of Obamacare is what it will do to marriages and families. In January 2010, two months before Obamacare’s passage, the estimable Robert Rector at the Heritage Foundation gave the impact a name: the “wedding tax.”

To illustrate, let’s start with the 60-year-old married couple with no children whose situation I illustrated at the end of Part 1:



http://pjmedia.com/blog/the-wedding-tax/


There is a LOT of good information in this article but I wanted to keep it at excerpt length.

Oceander

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Re: Obamacare’s ‘Cool Calculator,’ Part 2: The ‘Wedding Tax’
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2013, 03:04:22 am »
Very interesting article.  Some bon mots:

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If they have identical earnings totaling $65,000, which will usually net down to $50,000 or below after all income and payroll taxes, their Obamacare exchange Silver Plan premium next year with the same earnings will be $16,382, or about one-third of what used to be their take-home pay. (And they call it the “Affordable Care Act”?)

What can this couple do? Well, they could decide to earn a few thousand dollars less, which will negate the five-figure premium hit. Encouraging ordinarily willing workers to put in less effort isn’t good in any economy, but especially not this one. But if either spouse’s earnings are unpredictable or hard to precisely track, they could still “mess up” and get socked with a premium they can’t afford.

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The “easiest” solution would be to avoid the “wedding tax” entirely by getting divorced while still living together. Here’s what would happen if they make that choice:


Instead of facing an exorbitant premium increase once their combined earnings hits $62,041 if they were to stay married, each cohabiting adult can earn up to $45,960 before Obamacare’s “tax credit”-free premiums kick in. Their annual after-tax savings at age 60 if they shack up and keep their individual earnings between $31,021 and $45,960 will range from $7,650 to over $11,000. The annual savings will slightly increase every year until Medicare kicks in at age 65. That kind of money can buy a lot of gifts for the grandkids.

Oceander

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Re: Obamacare’s ‘Cool Calculator,’ Part 2: The ‘Wedding Tax’
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2013, 03:05:02 am »
And a little more:

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Let’s look at the situation of a 40-year-old couple with two children. The spouses’ annual earnings are $70,000 and $23,000, respectively:


The couple’s annual unsubsidized premium while married is $11,547 (OFA’s vaunted “tax credits” disappear at $92,401 for married couples with two children). But if they divorce and shack up while giving custody of both children to the lower-earning spouse, their combined annual premiums, at $4,317, will be over $7,200 lower. That’s over $600 a month. As was the case in the previous example, the savings from divorce will gradually increase every year. Parents will be torn between doing what Western civilization has considered morally right for millennia and their children’s financial well-being as never before.

Oceander

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Re: Obamacare’s ‘Cool Calculator,’ Part 2: The ‘Wedding Tax’
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2013, 03:06:16 am »
Methinks that divorce attorneys in no-fault states will be overwhelmed with new work for the next few years.