A new brief shows many uninsured adults are unaware of the looming tax penalty for individuals who have not obtained health insurance. The brief—prepared by researchers at the Urban Institute with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute—shows that 44.1 percent of uninsured people likely to be penalized for not having coverage had heard nothing or only a little about the tax penalties. Only a quarter of the uninsured people surveyed with incomes in the tax penalty range expect to pay the penalty.
The authors say that low awareness of the penalties is compounded by little awareness of the deadline for enrolling in insurance plans. Of the uninsured adults likely to pay the tax penalty, 65.4 percent had either not heard about the marketplaces, or had heard about the marketplaces but did not know the date of the open enrollment deadline, or thought the deadline was in March. The authors say that a special enrollment period for 2015 that extends through the end of tax season could help those who learn about the penalties when they file their 2014 tax returns.
“When people file their tax returns, many will learn for the first time about the penalties for not having insurance,” said Kathy Hempstead, who directs coverage issues at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Because of the gap between the deadlines for open enrollment and tax filing, some people will end up paying the penalty two years in a row because they didn’t know this information when they could have acted on it.”
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