Tax Credits Are Not the Answer: New at Reason

If you like social engineering done through the tax code, you’ll love the House Republicans’ health care plan, writes Veronique de Rugy in Reason’s June 2017 issue. It takes the refundable tax credit that Obamacare provides to most people who get their coverage through a government-run insurance exchange and replaces it with a refundable tax credit available to anyone who buys a plan on the individual market. This would make our already nightmarish Internal Revenue Code even more complicated and tax season even more painful, de Rugy notes.

Republicans, who currently hold majorities in both the House and the Senate, regularly claim they want a fairer, simpler tax code. But the credits they seem to love are far more likely to be the product of special-interest lobbying than a careful study of social externalities.

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