Sunday, June 17, 2018

Obama’s Teeth - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk - (The Obamacare penalty)


If the Obamacare individual mandate isn’t a tax – and the IRS has no lawful power to collect it as a tax – then why did I receive a threatening letter from the IRS claiming very much otherwise?

The letter states that I “have an unpaid shared responsibility payment” of $695 that is owed – imagine that! – because I did not sign up for Obamacare or otherwise send money to the health insurance mafia. The mafia which succeeded in hiring the federal government as its Luca Brasi – its enforcer – to threaten and bully people into buying insurance.

This is an important distinction. Insurance is just a policy; it is not medical care. It means the insurance mafia may pay some of the cost of medical care, some of the time. But you will pay for the insurance all of the time. This is why the insurance mafia is a mafia.

Mafias use force against unwilling victims, to line their pockets. They will claim it’s for “protection” – a synonym for “coverage.”

Obamacare is doubly outrageous for this reason. Bad enough that this country has slipped so far away from the idea that government exists to keep the peace and toward the idea that it is our Mommy, from which we are never to be emancipated – like Down Syndrome children.

But it is a far worse thing that our liberty and our money have been taken from us for the financial gain of private business. Socialized medicine is objectionable on many grounds but at least in countries where it exists, the profit element is removed.

In this country, it is all about profit – at gunpoint. You are, after all, not being asked. Because you are not free to say no.

Not without being threatened with violence, including murderous violence.

The mafia is enormously rich; its executives rake in seven figure incomes and spend their days in fancy suites in high-rise office buildings with marble foyers and chromed/paneled elevators.

These parasites use the government to pluck us – like the Geese who exist to provide down for pillows. Like the plucked goose, we may receive “care” at some point. But not necessarily. It is at the discretion of the mafia – which may always raise the price of its protection/coverage.

Whereas we have no discretion about paying them. Not for care – but for “coverage.” ‘

And what if “care” isn’t necessary?

Why pay for what one does not need?

This is the reasoning I followed when, after my divorce, I decided to skip “coverage.” I have not been to a doctor’s office in years. Because I have not had need of doctoring. I’m healthy and fit. I take care of myself and rely on good habits and good genetics. That is my health insurance. I judge the paying of large sums of money each month – several hundred dollars, at least – for “coverage” I don’t use and probably won’t need to be a very poor use of my money. I consider it a much better use of my money to save it in the event I need it for something – including medical care.

But if I don’t need medical care, I will still have my money. If I buy “coverage,” I will not. So I did not buy “coverage.”

And – like many Americans – was under the impression that when the Supreme Court somehow discovered the authority in the Constitution for the federal government to mandate that Americans buy coverage, it was only able to do so by parsing the so-called Individual Mandate  – the obligation to buy “coverage” – as a not-tax.

Suposedly, the not-tax differed from the income tax and other actual taxes in that the feds could not collect it in the same manner as other taxes.

There was an Out.

For us.

The odd ducks who for reasons which seem judicious to us prefer not to be “covered,” prefer not to be taxed both by the government and the insurance mafia. That Out was – so we were led to believe – that the government lacked the power to tax us for not buying “coverage.” It could only deduct from our tax refunds a kind of punishment levy. This being the so-called “shared responsibility payment” described in the letter sent to me.

But it could not otherwise force us to pay.

I was told exactly this by my accountant – who ought to know. And yet, here is the letter. Possibly, it is braggadocious – a bluff, written in the government’s typically threatening style but without real teeth. It reads: “You owe this payment because one or more members of your tax household didn’t have minimum essential health coverage.”

Italics for reasons of hilarity – and depression.

“Essential”? To whom?

I do not consider it the least bit essential, else I would have purchased it. You know, like food and rent. Those things are essential to me. Being made to hand over 20 percent of my income to a private, for-profit mafia to be “covered” – maybe – for services I neither use nor desire for that very reason is as “essential” as I am a “customer” of the IRS.

My accountant insists they – the IRS – can’t do anything, in terms of using actual force to make me hand over what they style my “unpaid shared responsibility payment” of $695 unless, at some point, I am “owed” a tax refund. This, of course, is another perversion of language. A refund?

Do muggers give refunds?

At any rate, my accountant says they can only extract the “unpaid shared responsibility payment” from any tax refund I may be owed in the future. So as long as I am careful to end the tax year owing them money (sigh, an even more despicable inversion of language – and morality) they cannot do more than frown angrily and send angry letters.

But, I am concerned – and perhaps you should be, too.

If you are like me and have elected to not purchase “coverage,” for whatever reason (on the reasoning that you are a free man and thus it’s none of the government’s business whether you are “covered”).

Here’s why.

On the second page of the letter, I find the following:

“Pay $695 by July 2, 2018 to avoid interest charges. We charge interest if you don’t pay the SRP in full within 21 days from the date of this notice.”

The IRS is infamous for piling on interest – and penalties – which often ultimately dwarf the original amount “owed.” Do those of us who choose not to buy “coverage” stand in peril of having the Unpaid Shared Responsibility Payment we supposedly “owe” double or triple – or worse – over time, on account of interest (and penalties)?

Is that the means by which they will force everyone to pay up?

It is very worrisome, given $695 – in my case – could quickly metastasize into thousands of dollars. And that’s just the Unpaid Shared Responsibility Payment for 2017. What about this year’s Unpaid Shared Responsibility Payment? I am already up to $1,400 – last year’s $695 plus this year’s, since I have not bought “coverage” this year, either.

Will the filthy animals bankrupt me (and others) with interest and penalties – and can those interest and penalty assaults be applied to my assets? Can the IRS, for example, put a lien on my home? Levy – seize – my bank account?

These are very important questions and I intend to obtain the answers.

Stay tuned.

. . .

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