By Neil W. McCabe -- BombThrowers——Bio and Archives--October 4, 2017
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Attached are drafts of the letters that IRS will send to selected taxpayers who paid a penalty for failure to have coverage or who claimed an exemption form the coverage requirement for tax year 2015 … As you know, we are planning to send several different versions of the letter to see which types of messages work best.
Why am I getting this letter? The law requires people to have a minimum level of health coverage, quality for an exemption, or pay a penalty when they file their taxes. Our records show you claimed an exemption from the health coverage requirement when you filed your 2015 taxes. If you or someone in your family doesn’t have health insurance or an exemption next year, you’ll likely owe a penalty for 2017. We are writing to make sure you know how you can avoid this penalty by signing up for health insurance or getting an exemption.Another document, titled “a privacy/legal question” shows there was internal concern about using taxpayer data from the IRS, such as whether someone had declared themselves exempt from the individual mandate in the Obamacare law.
All records concerning IRS efforts to reach out to individuals who either claimed an exemption or paid a penalty for failing to purchase mandatory health insurance under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Such records include, but are not limited to, communications, policies, and procedures pursuant to such efforts; Samples of any letters, notices or other materials prepared and/or sent to taxpayers encouraging the purchase of mandatory health insurance; and Any records regarding cooperation between IRS and the Department of Health and Human Services or any other government entity, whether state or federal, regarding efforts to reach out to individuals who have not purchased mandatory health insurance. Such records, include, but are not limited to, communications, agreements, memoranda of understanding, and any other inter-agency communications. Of special interest are any such records regarding the sharing of protected taxpayer information.The tax agency told Judicial Watch it expects to complete production of the approximately 6,000 records by Jan. 24, he said. The IRS also expects an additional roughly 1,000 documents to be produced by early next summer. This article was originally published at Big League Politics.
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Neil W. McCabe is the editor of Human Event’s “Guns & Patriots” e-letter and was a senior reporter at the Human Events newspaper. McCabe deployed with the Army Reserve to Iraq for 15 months as a combat historian. For many years, he was a reporter and photographer for “The Pilot,” Boston’s Catholic paper. He was also the editor of two free community papers, “The Somerville (Mass.) News and “The Alewife (North Cambridge, Mass.).”