{"id":20440,"date":"2014-03-31T18:20:31","date_gmt":"2014-03-31T22:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=20440"},"modified":"2014-03-31T18:20:31","modified_gmt":"2014-03-31T22:20:31","slug":"irs-compliance-nightmare-looms-as-obamacare-site-crashes-ahead-of-deadline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/20440\/irs-compliance-nightmare-looms-as-obamacare-site-crashes-ahead-of-deadline\/","title":{"rendered":"IRS Compliance Nightmare Looms as ObamaCare Site Crashes Ahead of Deadline"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning Healthcare.gov \u2013 the federal ObamaCare website serving citizens in 34 states \u2013 went down for four hours, stymieing customers from accessing or completing their applications for insurance.<\/p>\n

NBC News<\/a> reports that people unable to log onto the website were put in a \u201cqueue,\u201d meaning they would be notified by email when they could resume the enrollment process.<\/p>\n

But with the deadline to begin an application (supposedly) ending at midnight, what will happen to people unable to return to their computer screens after the lengthy delay? Last week\u2019s extension to mid-April only covers people who start the process for enrolling by the end of March. If other commitments \u2013 say family or work responsibilities \u2013 don\u2019t allow an applicant to return, what then? How will federal regulators distinguish between people who never tried to use Healthcare.gov and those that did, but for various reasons beyond their control couldn\u2019t finish?<\/p>\n

If history is any guide<\/a>, don\u2019t expect the feds to make a distinction. More likely, the response sometime soon will be a blanket extension for enrollment that allows anyone \u2013 without precondition \u2013 to complete the process.<\/p>\n

Then it will be the IRS whose head will spin. When it comes to enrolling on an ObamaCare exchange, the carrots are the subsidies and the sticks are the fines. Any adult that goes without health insurance for three consecutive months is subject to a fine of $95 or 1 percent of her annual income, whichever is higher. And since that fee gets levied at next year\u2019s tax filing, it will be the IRS\u2019 job to sort out who is subject to the penalty.<\/p>\n

That is, as soon as the political operatives in the Obama administration decide when enrollment really, really<\/em> \u2013 no really we\u2019re serious this time! \u2013 ends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning Healthcare.gov \u2013 the federal ObamaCare website serving citizens in 34 states \u2013 went down for four hours, stymieing customers from accessing or completing their applications for insurance. NBC News reports that people unable to log onto the website were put in a \u201cqueue,\u201d meaning they would be notified by email when they could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4191,3007,4480,3308,1829,735,35,3005,105],"class_list":["post-20440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-delay","tag-exchange","tag-extension","tag-health","tag-insurance","tag-irs","tag-obamacare","tag-penalty","tag-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20440"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20448,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20440\/revisions\/20448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}