[lbo-talk] Query FICA tax expenditures on healthcare

Dissenting Wren dissentingwren at yahoo.com
Sun Aug 21 21:41:38 PDT 2011


Check out the OMB's annual Analytical Perspectives on the U.S. Budget.  There seems to be a detailed section on tax expenditures each year.  Here are URLs for FY 2011 and FY 2012.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy11/pdf/spec.pdf  (see esp Table 16-1)

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy12/pdf/BUDGET-2012-PER.pdf (see esp Table 17-1)

HTH

________________________________ From: Gar Lipow <gar.lipow at gmail.com> To: Progressive Economists List <pen-l at lists.csuchico.edu>; lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Sent: Sunday, August 21, 2011 11:09 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] Query FICA tax expenditures on healthcare

One figure I'm having trouble getting much on.

Because health care costs (health insurance and other employer paid health) is exempt from being considered income for FICA as well as income tax purposes, the FICA exemption constitutes a tax expenditure only second to  the income tax deduction for business.  Very hard to track down. I found a number for 2007 and am using it to create rough estimates for other years. But I'd feel a lot more comfortable with actual data. Does anyone know where such estimates can be found?

Again I'm not making an argument against the deduction (though I'm also not saying one can't be made.)  But it is a another place that reducing health care costs, via a single or all payer system, partially pays for itself because lower health care costs lower a cost that is being deducted.

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