IRS Needs $93 Mil For Obamacare Compliance
As if government wasn’t bloated enough, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will hire more than 1,000 new employees to monitor the implementation of Obamacare and the agency will spend an extra $93 million just to promote compliance in the first year.That’s because Obama’s hostile takeover of the nation’s healthcare system has created a “major challenge” for the IRS and the “largest set of tax law changes in more than 20 years.” At least that’s how the agency is justifying the costly additions in its 2012 budget request to Congress.The healthcare law will require additional resources to, among other things, build new information technology systems, modify existing tax processing systems and provide taxpayer outreach and assistance, according to the IRS budget request. There will also be other expenses for things such as resolving taxpayer “issues” in a timely and accurate manner and conducting “focused examinations to encourage compliance.”If this seems a bit murky, the detailed budget request provides some examples of what some of these things mean. For instance, the agency needs $34.4 million to hire 100 full-time staffers that will perform “new health coverage information reporting” and $22.2 million so that 150 employees can assist taxpayers in understanding the new provisions. It seems that these new divisions fall under taxpayer outreach or perhaps the innovative issue resolution department.A staff of around 84 will be hired at a cost of $9.9 million to “strengthen oversight of exempt hospitals” and $11.5 million will help create a tanning salon taskforce with 81 employees. Under Obamacare indoor tanning businesses must pay a 10% excise tax and the new division will assure that 25,000 facilities around the nation are complying. These appear to fall under “focused examinations to encourage compliance,” though it’s hard to say.The IRS also needs to hire more than 200 new agents to handle other tax law changes related to Obama’s catastrophic $787 billion stimulus, according to its budget request. As for Obamacare compliance requests, they can expect to grow since the law won’t even be fully implemented for several more years.
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