Academic

TAX PENALTIES IN THE HEALTHCARE BILL: ?Under the House legislation, taxpayers will be fined for hon?

By Glenn Reynolds

TAX PENALTIES IN THE HEALTHCARE BILL: “Under the House legislation, taxpayers will be fined for honest mistakes.” “Under current law, taxpayers who lose an argument with the IRS can generally avoid penalties by showing they tried in good faith to comply with the tax law. In a broad range of circumstances, the health-care bill would change the law to impose strict liability penalties for income-tax underpayments, meaning that taxpayers will no longer have the luxury of making an honest mistake. The ability of even the IRS to waive penalties in sympathetic cases would be sharply curtailed.”

I’m sure, though, that the IRS won’t have to pay you a penalty if they make a mistake that goes the other way. (Via Jonathan Adler, who comments: “Of course, it would be silly to expect legislators to actually read the whole bill before they vote for it (that would prevent them from blaming the IRS for enforcing the law as Congress enacted it).”)

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on August 25, 2009 (boomark / email).