Obamacare employer mandate delay lets the IRS look into business hiring

The IRS scandal keeps getting worse. President Obama is siccing the agency on employers, as well as Tea Party groups, to silence his critics before the 2014 midterm elections. That’s the hidden purpose behind the employer mandate delay announced last Monday and the administration’s push for new IRS regulations.

On Monday, February 10th, the administration released 227 pages of mind-numbing regulations, preposterously claiming that the gibberish would “make the compliance process simpler and easier” for employers. Hidden in the gobbledy-gook (on pages 125-6)  is a requirement that employers attest to the IRS, meaning under penalty of perjury, that they have not reduced the number of employees or cut hours to shield themselves from the extra costs of Obamacare.

Monday’s announcement has been widely misrepresented as delaying the employer mandate. It does that for the small number of employers, mostly in the hospitality and retail industries, who have 50-99 full time workers and currently don’t provide coverage. They won’t have to in 2015, despite what the law says.

But the vast majority of mid-size employers already provide coverage, and the new regulation will make them continue to. It freezes the status quo. However,  most of these employers won’t have the choice of sticking with current health plans. Either state insurance regulators or insurance companies have already said no to renewing those “noncompliant” plans. Instead they will have no choice but to pay for the generally costlier Obamacare compliant ones. That’s hardly relief.

Monday’s announcement is actually a hush money scheme. Under the Affordable Care Act, as written, employers are penalized a whopping $3,000 each time one of their workers goes onto the Obama exchanges and gets a taxpayer subsidized plan. Now the administration is offering to waive that penalty, provided employers stop complaining. Employers who want to take this deal must attest that they haven’t laid off workers or cut hours to squeeze under the 99-worker threshold.

Via: Daily Caller
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