|
100% deductible coverage?
|
 |
September 16, 1998: 7:43 p.m. ET
Congress charged to expand tax breaks for health insurance for self-employed
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - A U.S. Senator has recommended that Congress speed up the process of making health-insurance premiums for the self-employed fully tax-deductible, the Senate Committee on Small Business said Wednesday.
In a letter to Senator William Roth (R-Del.), Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) urged the Senate Finance Committee - which Roth chairs -- to add provisions for insurance deductibility in the tax legislation package it may consider before the Congressional session ends.
Bond, the chairman of the small-business committee, called full deductibility "his No. 1 small-business priority," and said it was "simple fairness long overdue."
"Last year, we scored an enormous victory in the Taxpayer Relief Act by increasing the self-employed health-insurance deduction to 100 percent," Bond said in his letter. "That bill, however, still requires the self-employed to wait until 2007 before they can deduct all of their health-insurance costs."
Five million U.S. citizens - including 1.5 million children -- would have better access to affordable health care if health insurance becomes fully deductible, Bond said, adding that a full 25 percent of all self-employed workers do not have health coverage.
Currently, 1997's Taxpayer Relief Act schedules health insurance to become 80 percent tax-deductible in 2003 and fully deductible in 2007.
Bond said that while the legislation definitely represented an improvement from the previous plan to cap insurance deductibility at 80 percent by 2006, he is still committed to full deductibility.
"It is totally unfair that large corporations can deduct 100 percent of their share of employees' health-care costs while the self-employed farmer, child-care provider, or truck driver can currently deduct only 45 percent of their costs," Bond said. 
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
