A new report from the Congressional Budget Office finds that 3 million low- and middle-income taxpayers will be forced to pay the penalty for failure to obtain health insurance. The report finds that 3 million taxpayers earning up to 5 times the poverty line will be paying an average of $633 in penalties. (Five times the poverty line is $54k for an individual, and $110k for a family of four.) Worse, 400 thousand who are actually below the poverty line will be paying an average of $500 in penalties. That’s right, 400 thousand taxpayers in poverty will still be uninsured, and will also have to pay penalties.
All of those are people to whom President Obama pledged he would not raise their taxes. An additional 900 thousand people over 5 times the poverty line will be paying the penalty, but the CBO report does not break that total up further. A few of those people are earning over the $250k threshold (about 23 times the poverty line for an individual, or 11 times for a family of four) at which Obama said tax increases would begin.
The CBO estimate indicates that 45% of the penalty collections will be from low- and middle-income taxpayers under 5 times the poverty line.
Internet Scofflaw 