IRS partly to blame for ObamaCare issues

The IRS likely will have to shoulder some of the blame this year for problems related to its role in President Obama’s healthcare law, an in-house watchdog said Wednesday.

{mosads}Nina Olson, the national taxpayer advocate, generally praised the IRS’s ObamaCare efforts in her annual report, saying that the agency’s work is heavily reliant on the job done by other parts of the federal bureaucracy and that many problems that might arise won’t be the IRS’s fault.

“The IRS will certainly bear much of the public blame because many of the problems will arise in the context of return filing,” the taxpayer advocate’s report said.

“Conversely, taxpayers and the IRS will experience problems created specifically by IRS policies or processes, some of which are exacerbated by the general reduction in funding for taxpayer service.”

Olson has long criticized congressional efforts to roll back the IRS’s budget, which include a $346 million cut enacted in December. She also noted that the IRS resources going toward implementing the agency’s role in the Affordable Care Act would help cause a decline in taxpayer services.

Still, Olson pointed out that the IRS’s efforts to train employees on their roles under the Affordable Care Act would be hurt because taxpayer forms and instructions weren’t finalized until late in 2014.

Plus, the taxpayer advocate criticized some of the IRS’s plans for collecting the mandated payment from people who choose not to purchase insurance, as required under the law. Olson specifically questioned the IRS for considering a plan that would force taxpayers to pay off the mandate on monthly installment plans for other debts.

Under the ACA, the IRS also has to reconcile the tax credit that some taxpayers are supposed to receive for purchasing health insurance with the credit they actually received.

In her report, Olson praised the IRS for its work educating taxpayers about that process.

That’s one reason Olson insisted that the agency had “made tremendous progress, considering the monumental task of implementing and administering the many complicated tax provisions of the ACA.”