This week, the Senate Finance Committee will be considering amendments to the Baucus-Obama government healthcare plan. The full list of amendments on the tax side can be found here. Below are some I thought were noteworthy:
- 466 (Rockefeller): eliminate HSAs (kind of makes it obvious what the endgame is)
- 497 (Hatch): give "Cadillac plan" tax transition relief to any state which begins with the letter "U"
- 501 (Hatch)/532 (Bunning): reverses the "medicine cabinet tax" by allowing over-the-counter medicines to be deductible as an itemized deduction
- 511 (Hatch): prevents ACORN from distributing any funds in Baucus-Obama
- 534 (Crapo/Roberts): prevents any tax hikes in the bill from hitting joint filers with AGI of less than $250,000 and all other taxpayers with AGI less than $200,000 (also see #541 by Ensign)
- 543 (Ensign): strike the word "fee" everywhere it’s found in the bill and replace with "tax"
- 546 (Ensign): ensure that federal employees’ (including elected officials’) health insurance plans that exceed the "Cadillac" level must pay the excise tax, notwithstanding any transition relief in the bill