Report: IRS’s tracking of healthcare costs shoddy

“This lack of complete information on ACA implementation costs limits the IRS’s ability to accurately report to stakeholders the total resources it applied to the ACA implementation and fully estimate the resources needed in the future for this effort.”

{mosads}Top Republicans have taken aim at the IRS in recent months over its targeting of Tea Party groups – using that to make the case that people should be concerned about how much influence the agency has over the healthcare law.

The audit also comes as Republicans are pushing to defund or delay the healthcare law in the current fiscal battles.

In a statement, the IRS said it “takes seriously its obligation to be good stewards of government resources and recognizes the importance of ensuring accurate accounting of resources,” and had already started implementing the inspector general’s recommendations. Those recommendations call for beefing up oversight of how labor costs are tracked. 

“The IRS ensured that ACA funds were accurately tracked, including those funded by the Health Insurance Reform Implementation Fund (HRIF). We appreciate TIGTA’s finding that IRS’s use of the HIRIF funding for ACA labor and contract costs was consistent with the HIRIF’s intended purpose of meeting the immediate funding needs associated with ACA implementation,” the statement added.