Employer premium contributions for employees and their opposite-sex spouses and tax dependents are 100% deductible as business expenses under federal and state tax law. This is true regardless of business type-sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, corporation, etc. These rules also apply to owners of C corporations and LLCs classified as corporations for tax purposes. These business owners are considered to be employees of the business for purposes of the tax treatment of premium contributions.
http://healthcoverageguide.org/reference-guide/laws-and-righ...
http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?br...
A 40 percent excise tax will be assessed, beginning in 2018, on the cost of coverage for health plans that exceed a certain annual limit ($10,200 for individual coverage and $27,500 for self and spouse or family coverage). Health insurance issuers and sponsors of self-funded group health plans must pay the tax of 40 percent of any dollar amount beyond the caps that is considered "excess" health spending.
So, you cherry picked a bunch of stuff here.
1) Neglected to state it starts 4 years from now...a lot can happen in that time.
2) Neglected to state 10K limit is for individuals, 27K for families.
3) Confused excise tax and tax exemption.
I don't think anything here refutes my point or makes what I said incorrect.
I point out that the ACA did do that. Not enough to yours or my liking, but it did nonetheless.
Your response is to complain that it didn't go far enough. Sure. But the least you can do is recognize that the ACA certainly does do something in the spirit of what you were claiming no one had attempted. That doesn't mean you have to like the law as a whole.
The ACA does remove that tax exemption, albeit partially. Every dollar above $10k or so ends up being taxed now. And not a small amount, either: the tax is to the tune of 40%. And since the cost of healthcare will continue to rise faster than inflation for the foreseeable future, more and more employer health plans are going to be hitting that number.
I'd certainly prefer the tax exclusion to disappear entirely, but the ACA is nothing if not an attempt to offer coverage to the poor and people with pre-existing conditions while doing the minimum possible to disrupt the healthcare market. That's why it's a bit of a Frankenstein: no one in their ideal world would have chosen the ACA as their ideal policy. But given the set of institutional actors and the setup of our government, it may well be the best that was possible. That's how the Obama administration thought of it, at least.
IIRC that tax was actually a pretty nasty fight between the Obama administration and labor unions, who get their members relatively good benefits and will be hit disproportionately by it. And you know what? The tax-free cap may well have been significantly lower with Republican input. But they chose to put 100% of their efforts into making a mediocre law fail than trying to turn it into a good or great one.
Apologies for the angry rant.