Individual Taxes: TaxVoxUntil now, unions have been among the strongest critics of paying for health reform by limiting the tax exclusion for employer sponsored insurance. But on Monday, a well-connected labor lobbyist told me a deal could be done. “It all depends,” he said, “on what the cap looks like.” Remarkably, in just a few weeks, lawmakers seem to have moved beyond the argument over whether the exclusion should be capped. Now, they are debating how. It is not easy. There are caps based on employee income, the value of the insurance, or both. There are caps tied to the actuarial value of coverage, or linked to geography. Then, there is the issue about how to index a cap.
June 10, 2009Howard Gleckman