Beginning January 1, 2014 the PPACA (a.k.a. ‘Obamacare’) legislation levies a brand new tax – the “Roberts Tax”. A tax aptly named after U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who created this new tax all by himself. It is neither an excise tax, nor a capital gains tax or any other kind of defined tax. It is instead a new tax, a tax for doing nothing and it will be levied on nearly all Americans including small and large business owners whether they do offerhealth insurance to their employees or they do not. To find out if you will pay the ‘Roberts Tax’ see chart below:
The best way to describe this new tax is to imagine walking into a grocery store and the clerk asks if you would like to purchase a pack of gum. You politely decline the offer and are then forced by a new tax law – as defined by John Roberts – to give that clerk a tax for refusing to purchase that pack of gum. This, my fellow Americans, is how unmoored from our Constitution that our Federal Government has become.
It is important to note that this new ‘Roberts Tax’ is a tax that was vehemently denied by President Obama on multiple occasions as being a tax at all. In the interview below with ABC news, President Obama passionately refutes the very definition of a tax, as defined in the dictionary, in order to continue to message this new tax as a ‘fine’ and not a tax.
The reason President Obama so passionately refuted the fact that this new ‘Roberts Tax’ is indeed a tax and instead messaged it as a ‘fine’ is because he made a ‘firm pledge’ (in the video below) to the American people in Dover, New Hampshire, prior to the passage of the PPACA. “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family, making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” – Barack Obama.
Beginning January 1, 2014, this new ‘Roberts Tax’ will affect nearly all Americans. None more onerously than small business owners with 50 or more full-time employees who do not offer health insurance to their employees. Or, do not offer a health insurance plan that includes the new PPACA mandated “Essential Health Benefits Package“.
These small business owners are referred to by the Obama administration as ‘Large Employers’. The Obama administration considers a ‘Large Employer’ as one with more than 50 full-time employees in calendar year 2013. Thanks to a ‘new rule’ written by HHS, a full-time employee has now been REDEFINED as one who works 30 hours or more each week (traditionally ‘full time’ employee has been one who works 40 hours per week). Full-time seasonal employees who work for less than 120 days during the calendar year are excluded from any PPACA ‘Robert’s Tax’ calculations. However, the hours worked by part-time employees are included in the calculation of a ‘Large Employer’, each month, by dividing their total number of monthly hours worked by 120.
EXAMPLE:
A ‘Large Employer’ has 35 full-time employees (who work 30 or more hours per week). That ‘Large Employer’ also has 20 part time employees who each work 24 hours per week. This equates to 96 hours each month. These part-time employee hours would be equal to 16 full-time employees. Here’s how that is calculated:
20 employees multiplied by 96 hours = 1920 total hours worked. 1920 hours divided by 120 = 16 full time employees. Isn’t this fun? Oh wait, there’s more!
Blog Source Credited: C Steven Tucker SmallBusinessInsuranceServices.com