Open Enrollment Time: Should You Change Your Healthcare?
It may be the holiday season, but it is also open enrollment time. Open enrollment is when you are allowed to change your healthcare plan for the upcoming year. This is a pretty significant time in regards to your health insurance since it is the only time you are allowed to change your plan for the year. There are exceptions to this rule, however. For example, if you were recently married, had a baby or started a new job that is offering you health insurance. Other circumstances that are also exceptions are depicted in the infographic below depicts this perfectly.
The Affordable Care Act and Taxes
Since the passing of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you are required to have health insurance, and it is important to choose a good one because you can’t change it again until 2017! This will be the second year of people filing their taxes with the Affordable Care Act and when it comes to filing and including your healthcare on your taxes is still a little confusing for some. For the 8 out of 10 households who used Turbotax only had to check a box, indicating they had health insurance. As one of those households who used Turbotax last year, I can attest to the simplicity of using Turbotax for my taxes. I did have some anxiety about the Health Insurance part since it was new and I had no idea what to expect.
Before you start to panic, just know that there are some great resources out there to help you. TurboTax offers a free suite of tools to help people understand how the ACA will affect their taxes. And the best part is that TurboTax doesn’t charge taxpayers any extra fees for health care-related forms to comply with the ACA. Here I would like to go over some of the basics when it comes to filing your health insurance on your taxes.
Tax Forms and Healthcare Insurance
The forms involved for filing your health insurance can seem tricky but are pretty simple to understand. The two forms are the 1095A and the 1095B/C. Depending on your circumstances you should receive one of the two.
Who Should file a 1095A?
If you purchased your health care on your own using a site like Healthcare.gov or another medical insurance site, you would receive a 1095A. This form confirms their coverage, premiums and any subsidies they received to help pay for health insurance. This is what I will be filing this year since I am working for myself and had to get health insurance on my own. I only add the information to Turbotax when prompted. This year should be even easier since they now allow you to upload it as a PDF document.
Who should file a 1095-B/C?
If you receive your health insurance through your employer or if you get Medicaid or Medicare you may receive a 1095 B or C from your employer or insurance provider. According to the IRS, there is no need to wait for these forms to file your taxes. You only need these forms to review for accuracy, and you can keep that form for your records. This is what I submitted last year since I was working for an employer full-time.
Tools You Can Use
While I love using TurboTax and have used them before, I can attest to how easy it is to do your taxes with them. But what I do enjoy about TurboTax hat they are all about educating people, and sometimes do so for free! They have a great variety of free tools that make it easy to see how ACA may affect your taxes and finances that anyone can use. Here are a few.
You use the income estimator tool to see how much government assistance you may qualify for to help you pay your monthly healthcare premium based on your annual household income and family size.
The Subsidy Calculator tool lets you know if you qualify for a tax credit from the government, and for how much.
If you did not sign up for health insurance, this tool lets you calculate how much your penalty will come tax time, so there are no surprises.
Don’t be caught off guard come tax season. Turbotax makes it easy to understand and file your taxes with the Affordable health care act.
TurboTax does not charge taxpayers any extra fees for any healthcare related forms. As with all tax situations, TurboTax simplifies the tax filing process, and reporting your health insurance is no different. You just answer a few basic questions about your life, and they do all the rest. Check out Turbotax here. How did you file your taxes last year with the ACA? Was it difficult?
I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.
