Calculating healthcare penalties, more love for the EITC
On health care and tax returns鈥� You can keep your current low-benefit health insurance plan for two more years, from the Obama Administration. But the Affordable Care Act still requires many听without insurance to pay a penalty tax.听 and shares a new that figures those ACA听penalties. Chances are, they鈥檙e a bit steeper than that $95 we all hear about.
(Almost) everybody loves the Earned Income Credit. Or at least the idea of it, . Roll Call reports that reflects the Obama Administration鈥檚 plan to extend the EITC to childless workers. Under the New York program, which delivers an EITC twice the size of Obama鈥檚 proposal, most benefits would go to those earning between $6,667 and $14,300 a year. For a review of the best ways to听extend the EITC, by Peter Edelman, Mark Greenberg, Steve Holt and Harry Holzer from the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy. The basics of the EITC are .
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Tax Prep volunteers give a little and help a lot. The IRS鈥� Low-Income Taxpayer Clinics program鈥檚 is out, covering the 2012 tax year. Nearly 2,300 LITC volunteers gave over 59,000 hours (an average of more than听25 hours each). Together, they helped 42,700 taxpayers collect over $5.8 million in refunds in 2012, and saved them nearly $35.5 million in tax liabilities, penalties, and interest. Put another way: Each hour is worth, on average, a bit over $600 in tax savings per return.
Speaking of tax returns: Refunds are higher this year. The IRS that as of last Friday (2/28), the average 2013 tax refund is $3,034, up 3 percent from this time last year. The IRS has received almost 40 percent of the returns it expects to receive this season. Is your return in that group, or in the remaining 60 percent?
Enjoy the weekend鈥� There are only six more of them till Tax Day.
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