Thursday, July 16, 2009

Insurance for all may get ugly for small businesses

I have no problem with the concept, insurance for every American is something that I believe would be helpful for a majority of Americans…If it does what it is designed to do, and that would be to make health insurance affordable and/or available to all Americans. But as science teaches us: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So we begin the real fight: WHO IS TO PAY FOR THIS PROGRAM?

Under a recently released house measure (this is not a bill, it has not passed) members of congress would like a big investment from small businesses to further this initiative. Congress would structure a penalty system for small businesses that do not provide health care to their employees and it would be structured something like this:

Employers with payrolls: Penalty amount (of gross payroll):
Over $400,000 8%
250K – 400K (some smaller penalty)
Less than 250K Exempt from penalty

To further this cause, employers with payrolls less than $250,000 would be offered a tax credit as an incentive to offer health insurance.

According to the National Federation of Independent businesses this measure would affect more than one million small businesses.

Normally I don’t comment on bills that have not been finalized, but this would be a major shift in tax policy for small businesses.

Also check out a great article in the wall street journal that I gleaned much of the facts from, and from which you can extract more information.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124759535535340189.html

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