Originally Posted by
Flying Elvis
ACA ("Obamacare") Tax Easter Egg, in case you missed it:
In 2018, the ACA institutes a 40% excise tax, sometimes called the "Cadillac tax," on any employer contributions towards healthcare which exceed certain thresholds.
The TA allows the company, in order to avoid paying this tax, to reduce its contributions and pay the difference directly to the pilots. So, you'd theoretically get the dollars in your paycheck to pay the increased premiums, deductibles, and copays.
Sounds OK, right? Not so fast.
That difference gets into your paycheck as normal income. That means it's taxed. So, instead of the company paying taxes on those dollars, you will - and depending where you sit in the tax brackets, it might be roughly the same amount.
This keeps getting better and better.
When the SCOTUS ruled that the penalty for not having insurance under obomacare was a "tax", America's fate on this was sealed. Corporations will eventually pawn the cost of premiums off on the workers as either imputed income or in the form of a "pay increase" that will be used to pay those same premiums. It's only a matter of time and those that brought it to us will be long gone. You hit the nail right on the head.