The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 created a combined estate and gift tax rate of 40% while raising the estate tax exemption to $5.43 million in 2015. The gift exclusion stays at $14,000 in 2015. These changes generate some estate-planning benefits that most people haven’t yet realize. For example, many wealthy people didn 't bother trying to minimize capital gains in the past because the lower tax rate of 15% was better than paying 50% in estate taxes. Now people can benefit by choosing which assets they keep until death more carefully. Appreciated assets can be held until death and might fall within the $5.43 million exemption. This could be especially important when realizing capital gains could be subject to a higher, nearly 24% …show more content…
Marriage always generates tax questions, but you can often find substantial opportunities when your life changes in a major way. For example, consider two people who each own a home. The couple plans to sell one home and live in the other. In a display of marital enthusiasm, Carol sells her smaller home before the marriage and moves to Bob 's palatial home.
Unfortunately, the couple failed to take advantage of tax planning. If Carol and Bob had moved to the smaller home and made it their primary residence, they could have fixed it up, realized more money from the sale and avoided capital gains on $500,000 when selling a primary residence. Instead, Carol sold the home for $400,000 and had to pay capital gains on $50,000 over the $250,000 exemption for a single taxpayer. The home was originally valued at $100,000, so the sale generated a $300,000 gain.
Responding to the Medicare Surtax on Investment Income
The Affordable Care Act imposed a Medicare tax for the first time on investment income over certain limits. Tax planning could save up to $900 on each $100,000 of income. If you realize several million dollars in capital gains, finding a way to avoid the surcharge could generate substantial savings in six figures.
Tax Planning Tips to Remember for 2015 and Beyond
General tax planning tips apply to anyone. Although general
Anderson, Amy. “The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Health Care Workforce.” The Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2015. This paper is a through report on the impact of the ACA on the workers in healthcare, particularly on the ratio of worker to patients. It shows that the act will increase the physician shortage, particularly in already underserved areas and specialties. It will also greatly increase the stress on workers, due to the increase demand from each physician or nurse and the increased amount of regulatory paperwork required. Many healthcare providers are merging into larger business to cut costs; others are running cash-only or annual-fee models. The act attempts to transition to paying physicians for performance
In 2009 The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) allocated approximately $19 billion to support physicians and hospitals in attaining meaningful use of health information technology (HIT). The meaningful use program is intended to facilitate providers to amass
In 2008, the American economy broke down. Known as the Global Financial Crisis, this is widely considered to be the worst financial crisis since the 1930’s when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression hit.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. While the act is directed at addressing one of the country's most pressing problems, it generated much controversy as a consequence of the ethical dilemmas that it brings on. The act provides individuals with a wider range of choices and control over their health coverage. It provides a series of benefits such as people getting lower costs on coverage, several important health benefits being covered in the Marketplace, more help in local areas, and pre-existing conditions being covered. However, it also involves a legislation claiming that most people have to have health coverage by 2014, with those who do not have it having to pay a fee.
The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is a healthcare program created by president Obama’s administration. The goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make sure every United States citizen has health insurance. The Affordable Care Act provides “affordable” health insurance plans to citizens that do not have any and make about $15,000 a year. While the idea of providing health insurance to the millions of American’s that cannot afford it is great, everything comes at a cost. According to Emily Miller, Obamacare is causing people’s health insurance premiums to rise by around 1 to 9 percent (Miller 15-15). Not only are insurance premiums rising, but ever since the Supreme Court declared the Affordable Care Act constitutional approximately 20 tax hikes have been approved (Battersby). All the aforementioned reasons are helping pay for Obamacare. Although providing health insurance for people that cannot afford it is important, the Affordable Care Act should be revoked because it will hurt the economy.
Generally, a realized gain from sale of personal residence can be excluded from gross income under Exclusion 121. The amount realized is the selling price of the property less any disposition costs. The adjusted basis is then determined and the amount is subtracted from the realized sum. This will give you the amount of loss or gain from the sale of the property. Since the couple occupied the sold home for at least 2 of the last 5 years they fulfill the requirements for exclusion 121 treatment. The exclusion amount for the couple if filing jointly is $500.000 and the calculation would be as follows:
The Affordable Care Act established by Barack Obama it is a revolutionary law that was passed to change the healthcare system in America. The affordable care act has many pro and cons. Is the Affordable care a good idea? The Affordable care act was put in place to help maintain healthcare spending cost, reduce the amount of people who are uninsured, create universal healthcare, expanding coverage for young adults and to make prescription drug coverage more affordable for seniors. In the year of 2010 and 2011 over 5.1 million seniors and people with disabilities on Medicare have saved over 3.1 billion on prescription drugs, however this includes a one-time rebate
The 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the most current governmental effort to bring a national health care plan to the United States (U.S.). Policy makers in the U.S. are hopeful the ACA will be able to extend health care coverage to 47 million nonelderly uninsured citizens (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2014). The ACA broadens the Medicaid eligibility for low income individuals at or below the 138% Federal Poverty Line (FPL) and adds tax credits to assist people to purchase insurance in the Health Insurance Marketplace (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015). In 2012, the Supreme Court the upheld the constitutionality of the ACA requiring most people to maintain a minimum level of health insurance, however they left the
During the botched 2010 roll out of the affordable care act, multiple veteran’s agencies marched on Washington with fears of how the Tax/Mandate would affect indigent veterans who could not afford the penalty and could not afford secondary insurance. In their hubris, these agents pushed an agenda that has greatly hurt the veteran population.
The Affordable Care Act has brought many changes to healthcare in the United States. Some of the changes brought on by the Affordable Care Act have had a positive impact on society and some have had a negative impact. Some of the positive effects of the Affordable Care Act include better consumer protection and equality, and healthcare coverage for more Americans. Some of the negative effects include rising insurance premiums and a shortage of doctors. There is also a new set of rules under the Affordable Care Act regarding the billing of medical claims.
The Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress and then signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010. The law was enacted in two parts: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and was amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act on March 30, 2010. The name “Affordable Care Act” is used to refer to the final, amended version of the law. The Act provided Americans with better health security by expanding coverage, held insurance companies accountable, lowered health care costs, guaranteed more choices and enhanced the care for all Americans (Medicaid.gov). Health insurance market places allowed shoppers to compare health plan that counted as minimum essential coverage.
Universal Healthcare in the United States has been a long time journey that dates back decades and we, as a country, are far behind other developed countries who have had universal healthcare for a long time. Today, Healthcare is obtained through employers or by people paying for it by themselves, which is incredibly expensive due to high premiums. Five years have passed since the controversial Obama care, or Affordable Care Act, was signed into law on March 23, 2010. The Affordable Care Act aimed at fixing the many problems that the United States has with healthcare by making it available to everyone, but also more efficient and this required drastic changes that made some people happy while others unhappy since some are benefiting while others are not. These people include politicians, but foremost presidential candidates. Candidate’s stance on the issue of healthcare is truly important due to the fact that if they’re the next president of the United States, it could hurt or improve the health care reform. Noteworthy candidates are: Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Bernie Sanders. Republicans and Democrats have long debated whether or not the Affordable Care Act should be repealed or replaced. Republicans believe that it is a problem while Democrats support it. The Affordable Care Act should not be replaced but instead improved because it provides quality and affordable health care to Americans. Everyone gets sick and people shouldn’t be afraid of receiving help
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 identified three main components of meaningful use: the use of a certified EHR in a meaningful manner, electronic exchange of health information to improve quality of care, and the use of technology to submit clinical outcomes and quality measures (Heath Resources and Service Administration, n.d.). ARRA includes many measures to modernize our nation’s infrastructure, with the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act” being an example. The HITECH Act is an effort led by Centers for Medicare and Medicare Services (CMS) in support of electronic health records and meaningful use (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC 2016). According to Galbraith (2013), the HITECH Act aims to promote the use of EHRs by providing over $27 billion in monetary incentives for health care providers that become “meaningful users”. CMS uses these core objectives to determine if a health care provider has satisfied meaningful use and is eligible to receive financial incentives (Galbraith, 2013).
The Obama Care bill also Known as the patient protect and Affordable Care Act was established on March 21, 2010. The Affordable healthcare Act also known as Obama Care has helped over a billion people gain access to health. In 2010 it shows that 50 million people in America did not have insurance, it also shows that 48.6 million people had decreased, and then it increased in 2012. In 2010, before the Healthcare Act was signed Obama noticed some of the small issues that were going on in healthcare systems. Obama seen that some of the insurance Companies had some unjustified rates for their healthcare plan. He observed how some of the prices for healthcare were controlled by hospitals and private doctors. The way that the healthcare system used to work was that the people that could afford the healthcare plans were able to get them. The People that were unable to get healthcare insurance like through their job or a private practice had to rely on getting Medicaid and Medicare was only for disable people or elderly people. The Affordable healthcare Act was placed to help people throughout the U.S. receive insurance even if they don’t qualify with their employer or private healthcare insurance. What many people do not know is that the new affordable care act offers many great benefits. Such as great benefits for women’s health, Birth control, people with preexisting conditions have great benefits, etc. Having this Affordable Act care will bring great benefits to our future and
The purpose of The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to increase access and make it more affordable for all Americans. Unfortunately, the US health care delivery system lacks the ability to plan, direct, and coordinate from a central agency making it difficult for citizens to obtain health coverage. For that reason, The Affordable Care Act in 2010 became the most extensive health care reform in US history with its main objective to reduce the number of uninsured. The ACA permitted some standards in the health care delivery system to achieve universal coverage. Some examples were authorizing health insurances to start covering children and young adults below the age of 26 under their parents’ health insurance plans also allowing the law to lower