Lowest Income Families Will Owe Thousands in ObamaCare Taxes
February 26, 2014
Even the lowest-income families will owe $7,000 in ObamaCare taxes over the next 10 years, says Chris Conover, a research scholar at the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University.
President Obama's promise not to raise taxes on any family earning less than $250,000 was broken as soon as ObamaCare was enacted. The law has 21 different taxes -- intended to raise over $1 trillion -- but only 30 percent of those taxes will actually be paid solely by the "rich" (singles earning $200,000 or couples earning $250,000).
• The top 2 percent of families will owe $177,000 in ObamaCare taxes from 2013 to 2022. But that is actually only 34 percent of the Affordable Care Act tax burden.
• The bottom 20 percent of families -- those families earning less than $19,000 in 2012 -- will have to pay $6,893 in ObamaCare taxes over that same time, 7.3 percent of ObamaCare's tax burden.
• Measured as a share of after-income, the burden on the lowest 20 percent of earners is two times that of the top 20 percent of earners.
While many families in the bottom quintile will receive wealth transfers from Medicaid and subsidies in the exchanges, they are being taxed in other areas and, additionally, will see higher prices.
Source: Chris Conover, "Even Low Income Families Will Pay Thousands Of Dollars In ObamaCare Taxes," Forbes, February 20, 2014.
