We all knew Obamacare would make tax season a nightmare for all of us, and it has, but the government just made it a lot worse by sending the wrong tax information to nearly one million customers.
The Obama administration revealed Friday that it sent about 800,000 HealthCare.gov customers a tax form containing the wrong information, and asked them to hold off on filing their 2014 taxes.
Here is the long-winded, complicated and confusing explanation from Healthcare.gov:
If you enrolled in a plan through the Health Insurance Marketplace for 2014, you should’ve received an important tax statement in the mail, called Form 1095-A. This statement has information you need to fill out your 2014 federal income tax return.
Most people received a correct Form 1095-A. However, if we contact you because your Form 1095-A is incorrect, here's why. Some forms included the monthly premium amount of the second lowest cost Silver plan for 2015 instead of 2014, which needs to be corrected. The incorrect amount is listed in Part III, Column B of the Form 1095-A. We're working quickly to resolve this and any other issues with the 1095-A forms. This does not mean that your tax credit was incorrect; this is purely an error in what was printed on the form.
If your form is affected by this issue, you’ll get a call and email from us in the next few days, and you will get a message in your Marketplace account here on HealthCare.gov. Once you log in, you should select your 2014 application, and then select "Tax forms." You will see a message letting you know if your 1095-A form is being corrected. This is also where you will find your corrected form when it is completed. When the corrected form is ready, we’ll send a message to your Marketplace account. All corrected forms should be available by early March.
Beyond the bureaucratic, "Some forms included the monthly premium amount of the second lowest cost Silver plan for 2015 instead of 2014, which needs to be corrected. The incorrect amount is listed in Part III, Column B of the Form 1095-A," what exactly does Healthcare.gov mean when it states, "any other issues"? Will there be more? When will they find these other issues? How many man hours will it take, from federal government employees and private citizens filing their taxes, to work out these "other issues"?
This screw up comes after months of leaving sensitive user information and data open to hackers and identity thieves on Healthcare.gov and the website is still experiencing problems.
In the final day leading up to Obamacare’s sign-up deadline, the website was once again hit with technical glitches that prevented people from signing up for health insurance.
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The problems stemmed from a function on the site that verifies people’s income to determine if they qualify for federal subsidies, and if so, how much. Officials from the Department of Health and Human Services confirmed the issues on Saturday, saying some people weren’t able to submit their applications because the website couldn’t verify their income.
To date, the administration has spent a total $2.2 billion to build and repair the website.
You'd think with a $2.2 billion website and 9,000 new IRS employees, this whole process would be done right the first time. But alas, big government means big problems and big headaches for people simply trying to comply with tax law.
