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Just a reminder, for those who are interested in individual autonomy

“New Obamacare Tax Form Mandates Americans Report Personal Health ID Info to IRS”:

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form. The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

So why will the Obama IRS require your personal identifying health information?

Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme.  Every January, health insurance companies across America will send out tax documents to each insured individual.  This tax document—a copy of which will be furnished to the IRS—must contain sufficient information for taxpayers to prove that they purchased qualifying health insurance under Obamacare.

This new tax information document must, at a minimum, contain: the name and health insurance identification number of the taxpayer; the name and tax identification number of the health insurance company; the number of months the taxpayer was covered by this insurance plan; and whether or not the plan was purchased in one of Obamacare’s “exchanges.”

This will involve millions of new tax documents landing in mailboxes across America every January, along with the usual raft of W-2s, 1099s, and 1098s.  At tax time, the 140 million families who file a tax return will have to get acquainted with a brand new tax filing form.  Six million of these families will end up paying Obamacare’s individual mandate non-compliance tax penalty.

As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected version of this tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for this additional filing requirement. Taxpayers may view the projected IRS form at www.ObamacareTaxForm.com […]

But remember:  requiring some proof of identity before casting your vote for other people’s money is like a racist poll tax; and requiring parental notification of abortion is a severe encroachment by the state into the choice of women.

Up is down. Black is white.  Ricky Gervais lost his weight by way of a rigorous exercise and diet plan.

52 Replies to “Just a reminder, for those who are interested in individual autonomy”

  1. cranky-d says:

    When it’s for your own good (i.e. when progressives think it’s a good idea), practices like this are not an infringement on your liberty. That’s only true when progressives disagree with the goal.

  2. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Winston Smith does not exist.

  3. sdferr says:

    Sultan Knish: Troops in the Streets

    Our dictatorship doesn’t depend on men with guns, but men with pens and pocket protectors. Men who fill out forms all day and who know where our permanent record is. Our rule is under the empire of data. We are less worried about informers and more worried that a form that we filled out wasn’t done the right way or was lost along the way. The American headquarters of the KGB isn’t in a law enforcement building, it’s in the EPA and the IRS and a thousand other bureaucratic institutions.

  4. missfixit says:

    Just what exactly are you implying about Ricky Gervais
    ?

  5. Ernst Schreiber says:

    yoo hoo!

    who “you”?

    what?

  6. Libby says:

    Remember when the Left was screaming bloody murder over the Patriot Act making it possible for the Feds to peek at their library reading list? Oh, for such simpler times…

  7. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Totally off topic and just for fun:

    Whatever else you do today, Jeff, DO NOT read this.

  8. eCurmudgeon says:

    And, the 2016 form will have fields for current BMI, blood glucose levels, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, etc.

    Hey, if we’re paying for it, we need to make sure you’re taking care of that body, citizen.

  9. OCBill says:

    Fortunately, the IRS will then be able to use this information to inquire as to our general health, make sure we’re getting regular checkups, etc. Because they love us so much and, you know, we all belong to the government.

    Same reason they put those tags in the ears of cattle. Cattle may all taste pretty much the same, but you need to keep track whether each one has been getting their shots, etc. It’s for the benefit of the cattle. And, you know, the rancher.

  10. BigBangHunter says:

    – A counter view:

    – In the late 60’s, early 70’s I was the Principal engineer on a program for NSA called “Tennis”. It was one of a series of ELINT programs for gathering of intelligence.

    – Briefly what the program was designed to do is collect and analyze as much of the daily communications of all forms sent and recieved in the US, and as much of the world as possible.

    – In order to do that it was necessary, of course, to store the collected data for later review. The mass storage technology at the time was punch cards.

    – We set up the hardware and then proceeded with the first 8 hours of collection. After just that brief time we had so many boxes of recorded punch cards we ran out of space in the main NSA building, and had to start storing them in a warehouse across town.

    – Today we gather and store 10 trillion data records a week, and its headed upwards at an exponential rate.

    – Heres the point. Data accumulates at such a fast pace it is not humanly possible, even with the use of the best available computers and software to even start to analyze even a tiny fraction of it. and as the hardware improves the pace and growth of the data pile outruns the use of it by orders of magnitude, always.There just is not, and never will be enough people to man the guns.

    – In other words, the more the government intrudes, the more it fails. Of course there will be some cases where actual harm can be done, but overall its a losing battle.

    – Heres a clue. Whenever you see them go for the “snitch” type of program adjustment, you automatically will know they’ve already hit the “overwhelmed point”.

  11. BBH, I’ve had some similar experience. There was something called the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission that egnerated more data than could be processed at the time. I’ve also worked on a number of activities where the sensors could collect much, much more data than could ever be processed, and that was over twenty years ago. A lot of work went into how to identify what was important or different to prioritize what ended up on an analyst’s desk.

    IMHO, the libertarian concern is that whenever any authority decides to go after you they will have a great deal of information to tap into to build a case against you, no matter who you are. Don’t trust the firewalls or the goodwill of those collecting the data.

    FWIW, I just attended two conferences where Big Data was a dominant theme. The commercial world is just as inundated with too much data as the intel world and filtering it to identify actionable information is a real challenge.

  12. leigh says:

    Thanks, BBH. Very good summary from someone who knows what he is talking about.

  13. BigBangHunter says:

    – charlesaustin. Agreed. My comments were in no way meant to covey a sense of “it doesn’t matter”. We should always fight vigorously against all forms of governmental intrusion as a matter of guarding individual liberties and personal privacy.

    – Just shedding a little light on the realities, rather than the “sky is falling” alarmist reasoning, because the true facts of the situation are a great deal different in reality from what you read and hear.

    – As comforting as it might be to know that, as usual, the government has to put its pants on one leg at a time, and more often than not tends to step on its dong, ever vigilant is always the best policy.

  14. Ernst Schreiber says:

    re: the problem of too much non-specific (or general) knowledge

    And yet, Barak Obama and those just like him think they have the god like ability to sift through it all and plan our lives for us!

  15. eCurmudgeon says:

    Heres the point. Data accumulates at such a fast pace it is not humanly possible, even with the use of the best available computers and software to even start to analyze even a tiny fraction of it. and as the hardware improves the pace and growth of the data pile outruns the use of it by orders of magnitude, always.There just is not, and never will be enough people to man the guns.

    Not for a lack of trying. For example, Google’s “Dremel” data-analysis system:

    Dremel is a scalable, interactive ad-hoc query system for analysis of read-only nested data. By combining multi-level execution trees and columnar data layout, it is capable of running aggregation queries over trillion-row tables in seconds. The system scales to thousands of CPUs and petabytes of data, and has thousands of users at Google. In this paper, we describe the architecture and implementation of Dremel, and explain how it complements MapReduce-based computing. We present a novel columnar storage representation for nested records and discuss experiments on few-thousand node instances of the system.

    http://research.google.com/pubs/pub36632.html

  16. Ernst Schreiber says:

    But “[we] are being watched.*” I hear it on TV every Thurs. at 9 pm (8 pm Central and Mountain), so it must be true.

    *And by the Bat Computer too boot!

  17. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I hope google’s paying to use the Dremel name.

  18. BigBangHunter says:

    – Unfortunately for the data miners at the end of the day “somebody” has to read, interpret, and decide on a course of action. Then it has to be reviewed for a long exhaustive list of “factors”, then weighed as to level of importance, then once an actions is decided on, again weighed from all legal ramafications and potential liabilities, and finally communicated to the appropriate action agency.

    – Even if you are able to reduce the torrent of data to a managable amount, the process is daunting at best, and in reality its not really possible to do that, even a fraction of the time.

    – Every time the government adds to the data pile it just gets more problamatical.

  19. BigBangHunter says:

    – So the question of any sort of efficient process is in fact, answered for a variety of practical reasons ‘not possible’.

    – However, problems of a much greater threat evolve when the government is faced with that sort of roadblock and unmanagable condition.

    – They can, and often do, resort to liberty killing shortcuts and unconstitutional devices, and THAT is what we should be always watchibg for and mindfull of. (see: the Patriot act and its ectended powers.)

  20. BigBangHunter says:

    – Under the latest extensions of the Patriot Act, anyone, US citizens included, can now be tracked and “disabled”, via an armed aerial drone, for stealing your neighbors garden tools.

  21. Squid says:

    They don’t collect trillions of bits of data every day so that they can make all-knowing and all-wise decisions for the good of our country. They do it to keep us tied up in knots compiling trillions of bits of data every day for them, so that we never forget who is in charge. They do it not because they care what’s in every little box we fill in, but because they can ruin our lives if we live a box unfilled.

    Dust off and nuke it from orbit.

  22. BigBangHunter says:

    – MSNBC – Reporting the fake but accurate news even before it happens!….opps.

  23. leigh says:

    Too bad information isn’t still stored on punchcards.

    Back in the day, late 70s, my utility bills used to come in the mail in punchcard form. I used to hold them over the steam from the tea kettle to deform them before I paid them. It gave me a tiny bit of satisfaction to jamb the machine that was processing the bills and force an actual human to get in there and record my payment.

  24. missfixit says:

    i picked the wrong week to open my facebook account back up. Nonstop bleating from the social cons who insist that the soul of the nation is at stake (like every single election ever, and the only 2 things God cares about are abortion and gay marriage.)

    the Obama peeps are being a little more subtle. Subtle = quoting scripture and demanding that everyone show respect to the office of CIC.

    I need new friends.

  25. BigBangHunter says:

    – “Do not fold or spindle” – Heres the link you asked for Leigh.

    – Obamanation is unravling.

    – The mask has completely fallen off. Its a Black president in the heart of Black Cincinnatti, for the Black Americans and screw everyonr else.

  26. leigh says:

    Heh. Thanks, BBH.

    I wonder why the crowd isn’t booing the po-lice for handcuffing the nice man? /sarc

  27. BigBangHunter says:

    – Actually I think it was “Do not fold, spindle, or mutilate”…..its been awhile.

  28. leigh says:

    It’s the latter. I figured making the punchcard fatter wasn’t mutilation. But I could be wrong.

  29. BigBangHunter says:

    – Notice the sparsity of the crowd. For an overflow sityation there sure seemed to be an awful lot of empty seats.

    – Notice also how quickly he losses all attention of the crowd when it switches to “get whitey” Anybody that thinks his race baiting and race/class warfare hasn’t caused a serious widening of the racial gap is living under a rock. Hes single handidly set race relations back 50 years.

    – If there’s trouble after the election it will fall squarely on his head.

  30. leigh says:

    Yup. There are a bunch of threats to riot, to kill Romney, etc. It’s all a bunch of crap.

    The only thing that happens is they riot in their own neighborhoods. (You lived in Cleveland, I don’t have to remind you.) Burn thier own cars and shops after they loot them and never manage to get out into the general population.

    If you have to ride the trains or buses to commute, they’ll sit there and give you ‘hardcore’ if you have to stand or sit by them. I’m not just talking about minorities, either. Hardass ‘wigger’ kids are even worse since they seem to think they have to prove something.

    I really hated going into the parking garages at Duquesne at night. Eight floors of parking and no security.

  31. Ernst Schreiber says:

    i picked the wrong week to open my facebook account back up

    There’s a good week?

  32. cranky-d says:

    I picked a good week to not have a facebook account.

  33. leigh says:

    nr, your link is broken.

  34. newrouter says:

    oops

    link

  35. newrouter says:

    joe’s problem was going to “rushville” in the 1st place

  36. leigh says:

    No kidding.

  37. cranky-d says:

    I’m sure the progressives will call the tractor protestors un-American or something like that. You know, for doing the same thing the left does, except politely, neatly, and with permission of the owners of the property on which they gathered.

    I guess it’s not the same as what the left does at all.

  38. BigBangHunter says:

    – Here is a breitbart “live blog on Obama’s CorruptMedia”. No holds barred. Lots of interesting inside stuff you won’t see in the MSM on the various cover-ups, Sandy, and the phoney polling by guest writers.

    – The corruption and duplicity is so widespread its hard to cover it all.

  39. newrouter says:

    holder’s goons

    WASHINGTON, DC – After receiving information indicating that the Pennsylvania Republican Party and the Pittsburgh Tea Party may be systematically sending poll watchers to predominantly African American precincts in Pittsburgh, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Common Cause, The Advancement Project, The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the ACLU, together with a number of local community groups, sent a letter to Assistant U.S. Attorney General Thomas Perez, who is responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, asking that the Justice Department “make every effort to ensure that voters at these targeted locations are able to cast their ballots freely and fairly” and also to ask the Pennsylvania Republican Party about the source of its lists and the basis of its targeting.

    link

  40. BigBangHunter says:

    – Did those “oh so concerned”groups send any letters when they saw this?

    – I’m guessing they did not.

  41. Jeff G. says:

    See, nr, it’s because teabagging poll watching is inherently racist.

  42. BigBangHunter says:

    – Another chapter from “Dreams of my denial“.

    – They simply cannot survive if there’s such a thing as a T-party.

  43. newrouter says:

    via email

    Dear Pittsburgh Tea Partiers,

    Mitt Romney is coming to the Pittsburgh TOMORROW at a location near the airport. No other details are available at this time. That means we are really close in Pittsburgh that he would stop by on this important day. I will send out details when I know them. Don’t let this distract you if you have poll or GOTV activities planned as I do. Otherwise, send your friends and neighbors to meet the next president!

  44. BigBangHunter says:

    – BTW, In WI, the pre-election faux polling and real numbers count for early voring is exactly the same as for the Wilson recall, and we know how well that worked out for the Dems.

  45. newrouter says:

    i think you mean walker

  46. Darleen says:

    Remember when John Edwards was all about using the IRS to monitor health and I created an IRS form to mock him?

    If something similar shows up with my statements in January ….

  47. Pablo says:

    – Another chapter from “Dreams of my denial“.

    Ah, so the TEA Party is over. Just like al-Qaeda.

  48. leigh says:

    Well, I’ve just given myself a migraine reading comments on Leftie blogs.

    Yeah, I should know better.

  49. McGehee says:

    I gave up migraines in favor of hangovers.

    They’re just as painful, but getting one is a lot more fun.

  50. leigh says:

    I hear ya.

  51. SDN says:

    The point isn’t whether they can analyze the data, or draw any conclusions from it. The point is that they can use those required forms to selectively harass any citizen whose face they don’t like.

Comments are closed.