About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 Gerald Prante, President to Propose Large Tax Deduction to Spur Health Insurance Purchases 1 (2007)

handle is hein.taxfoundation/ffhexz0001 and id is 1 raw text is: FOUNDATION January 22, 2007 President to Propose Large Tax Deduction to Spur Health Insurance Purchases by Gerald Prante Fiscal Fact No. 74 In his weekly radio address this past Saturday, President Bush previewed a major new tax proposal that he will more publicly unveil Tuesday night in his State of the Union speech. His stated goal is to reduce the number of uninsured people, a hazy number to begin with, but which Census has pegged at 45.3 million (see Table 1). The vehicle the President has chosen to accomplish this is a large tax deduction for health insurance spending: $7,500 for a single person and $15,000 for a couple. But since most of the uninsured owe little or nothing in income tax, how can a deduction prompt them to buy health insurance? As Table 1 shows, over 50 percent of uninsured Americans owed no income taxes in 2004 after taking all credits and deductions. Therefore, if a healthcare tax incentive were passed in the form of either a deduction or a nonrefundable credit, over half of the uninsured would not even be able to claim any of it. The only way in which such an initiative would entice them to purchase any health insurance at all would be if the credit were made refundable. Table 1. Majority of Uninsured Americans Pay Nothing in Federal Individual Income Taxes and Would Therefore Be Unswayed by New Tax Deductions 2004 Federal Individual Income Tax Percentage of Uninsured Liability(after Refundable Americans on Tax Return by Credits) Amount of Tax Liability All Returns 100.0% Less than Zero 32.50 Zero 20.5% $0 - $499 7.1 % $500 - $999 7.3% $1,000 - $1,999 9.3% $2,000 or greater 23.3%0 $2 00............................................................................................................................................................or.gre ter...3.3%., Source: 2005 Current Population Survey (March Supplement) Note: Number of uninsured is equal to the number of uninsured Americans who are part of a tax unit

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most