The 1095-A is the tax statement in question and anyone who purchased a health care plan through the Marketplace will receive one. Included in this tax statement is the amount paid in monthly premiums, which is where the mistake was made. Some of the premiums figured for the Marketplace Silver plan were calculated based on the year 2015…for the 2014 tax year. Whoops! The potential error can be found on Part III, Column B of the 1095-A form as shown below.
This error could delay tax refunds for approximately 800,000 people who will be sent a corrected tax statement. An estimated 50,000 of those have already filed and may have to amend their returns. The remaining 750,000-ish will have to wait to file 2014 income taxes until they receive the corrected forms around early March.
We knew that this first year with the Affordable Care Act instated had the potential to be frustrating. Especially for close to a million families that will have to wait until the healthcare.gov fixes their silly error. Apparently they forgot that you file your 2014 taxes in the year 2015. Mistakes do happen, it’s human error. It’s too bad that the software they were using didn’t have date parameters set to keep things like that from happening.
Our UltimateTax Professional Software does have date parameters set, so if you make an error in the year or make a typo, you will see a diagnostic error telling you that the date is outside of the current tax year. We are all human, but good software can keep you from making embarrassing mistakes that result in 800,000 angry customers.
