ObamaCare May Cost Businesses $200K+ in Taxes

While ObamaCare confusion is giving some insurance brokers extra business right now, broker C. Steven Tucker is none too pleased with the law.

In this edition of Conference Room, Tucker tells FBN’s Jeff Flock that many of his small-business clients are facing huge tax bills down the road, thanks to the health-care overhaul.

“The chief concern is the return of the excise tax,” says Tucker. While the tax has been temporarily waived by President Obama, Tucker says businesses above the employer-mandate threshold (more than 50 full-time workers) will eventually need to either provide ObamaCare-approved health insurance plans, or pay $2,000 per worker, with a 30-employee offset. And the $2,000 is a starting point, not a flat fine. According to Tucker, depending on the employer’s current income-tax rates, it can cost more per employee.

“I have clients that are facing $200,000 excise tax beginning in 2014 … As soon as the president waived that, I called all of them – they were jumping for joy!” says Tucker. He says his clients are trying to make preparations now to be ready for the potential tax burden when the mandate kicks in.

No ‘Free’ Health Care

Tucker says health care will initially appear to be affordable, based on the huge subsidies the government is paying to insurance companies on behalf of participants. But he says out-of-pocket costs under the new system will easily rack up to more than $10,000, making health care not so affordable after all.

Tucker says these huge bills are due to the number of medical expenses now mandated by the law. “If you go back to 1979, there were a total of 252 federal- and state-imposed mandates,” says Tucker. “Today, post-ObamaCare, we’re at 2,262 mandates, and they’re not all medically necessary.”

Tucker says the cost of gym membership, hair prosthetics and colonoscopies are among the mandated procedures driving up the cost of health care.

“Get the government’s big boot off the private sector, and you’ll see medical costs go down,” says Tucker.