Health-law fines double for many uninsured

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Many people who went without health insurance last year now are seeing fines more than double under President Barack Obama’s health care law, tax-preparation company H&R Block said Tuesday.

Among its customers who owe a penalty for the 2015 tax year, the average fine is $383, compared with $172 for 2014, the company said.

Separately, among those who complied with the law and took advantage of its taxpayer-subsidized private health insurance, 6 in 10 now are having to pay back to the IRS some portion of their financial assistance.

Those payments also are trending higher this year, averaging $579, compared with $530 last tax season.

Although millions of uninsured people have gained coverage through the Affordable Care Act, the update from H&R Block underscores the extent to which the law’s complex provisions remain a challenge for many consumers.

The law provides subsidized insurance for people who don’t have access to coverage on the job. By using the income-tax system to deliver the subsidies as tax credits, the White House and congressional Democrats were able to call the health law a middle-class tax cut.

But it also connected two of the most-complicated areas for consumers: health care and taxes. At tax time, people have to account for the subsidies they received for health care or, if they remained uninsured, pay a fine.

H&R Block said it expected to see lots of confusion last year, the first time that consumers had to grapple with the connections between the health law and the income-tax system. But such issues don’t seem to have diminished this tax filing season.

“Even the people going through it a second time weren’t getting any better at it,” said Mark Ciaramitaro, the company’s vice president for taxes and health care.