Do Democrats Want to Repeal Portions of Their Own Health Care Law?
At least one Senate Democrat has thought about it. At issue is Section 9006 of the health care law, which requires vendors and small businesses to file Forms 1099 for any goods purchases that total over $600 in the aggregate over the course of a year – which will force all businesses, including small businesses, to file tax forms listing the amount of their annual transactions with vendors like their paper supplier, bottled water distributor, caterer, etc. This provision will affect 40 million businesses – ten times the number of firms the Administration asserts will benefit from small business tax credits.
Four Democrat Senators released a letter to the IRS yesterday noting that they are “seriously concerned” that the provision “may negatively impact the day-to-day operations of American businesses, especially small businesses…plac[ing] a hardship on small businesses by creating an extra paperwork burden.” Sen. Begich, one of the letter’s signatories, went further in a separate release, noting that while “at this time, I don’t support attempts to repeal this part of the law… the IRS is on notice that it needs to make this work for small businesses – if it doesn’t, I will support a repeal of this provision of the new law.”
As Sen. Johanns just pointed out in his speech on the floor, there are any number of reasons why Democrats might be having “buyer’s remorse” about this particular provision, which will create unnecessary costs for the engine of American job creation at a time where unemployment remains near record highs. But the solution to small business’ justifiable concerns is not to rely on the mercies of the Internal Revenue Service – which could hire up to 16,500 new agents to enforce these kinds of paperwork requirements – but to eliminate the provisions in the health care law that caused the problem in the first place.