Viral Email: "Now your insurance is INCOME on your W2's"

"Now your insurance is INCOME on your W2's"

[note - all mistakes below are original to the text]

From: XXXXXX@aol.com
To: XXXXXXXXXXXX@yahoo.com
Subject: Fwd: Fw: Now your insurance is INCOME on your W2's - please read

One of the surprises we'll find come next year, is what follows - - a little "surprise" that 99% of us had no idea was included in the  "new and improved" healthcare legislation . . . the dupes, er, dopes, who backed this administration will be astonished!   
 
Starting in 2011, (next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to show the value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company. It does not matter if that's a private concern or governmental body of some sort.  If you're retired? So what; your gross will go up by the amount of insurance you get. 
 
You will be required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen.  Take your tax form you just finished and see what $15,000 or $20,000 additional gross does to your tax debt.  That's what you'll pay next year.  For many, it also puts you into a new higher bracket so it's even worse.
 
This is how the government is going to buy insurance for the15% that don't have insurance and it's only part of the tax increases.
 
Not believing this???  Here is a research of the summaries.....
 
On page 25 of 29: TITLE IX REVENUE PROVISIONS- SUBTITLE A: REVENUE 
OFFSET PROVISIONS-(sec. 9001, as modified by sec. 10901)
Sec.9002  "requires employers to include in the W-2 form of each 
employee the aggregate cost of applicable employer sponsored group 
health coverage that is excludable from the employees gross income."
 
Joan Pryde is the senior tax editor for the Kiplinger letters.  Go to Kiplingers and read about 13 tax changes that could affect you.  Number 
3 is what is above.
 
Why am I sending you this?  The same reason I hope you forward this to 
every single person in your address book.  People have the right to know the truth because an election is coming in November. 

RESPONSE

Thanks for sending this to me.

I looked into this a bit, because it seems like such a terrible idea for the government to tax our insurance benefits. Here's what I found out:

The value of health insurance your employer gives you will be on your W-2s, but it will NOT be taxed- it's so they can gather information on health care costs around the country.

Notice that whoever wrote this didn't include a link to the Kiplinger's article she talks about! That article (read it here: http://www.kiplinger.com/businessresource/forecast/archive/health-care-reform-tax-hikes-on-the-way.html ) says right in point number 3: "The amount reported is not considered taxable income."

Just to be sure, I did some extra digging around on two of my favorite sites for stuff like this: Snopes.com and FactCheck.org. They both say this just isn't true.

Snopes says that insurance companies- not the little guys - will start paying a tax on "Cadillac plans" starting in 2018 - not next year - and that it won't affect any plan worth less than $27,000 per year. And even then, it's the insurer that pays the tax. Check out Snopes' whole article here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/HR3590.asp

FactCheck.org comes right out and says it: "Here's another one to add to the list of false claims about the new health care law." Apparently it was actually John McCain's idea to tax health insurance! And under the Health Care Reform bill that passed this year, your insurance "will continue to be untaxed, just as in the past."

Who sent you this? You should forward this along to everybody else who got this email, because it's clearly not true!

I hope you're well.