Insuring fairness is
an issue worth debating
Most of us have opinions even when the issues don’t personally affect us.
Should we come to the aid of invaded Ukraine and starving Gaza? Should we ignore science and not require vaccinations? Should we ignore federal law and use the military to supplement police? Should universities lose grants as punishment for promoting diversity? Should masked agents raid workplaces in search of workers to deport? Should the FBI secretly put tracking devices on reporters’ cars?
The way I phrased the questions probably reveals how I would answer them. But that’s the problem. Too often, issues that don’t directly impact people we know can be twisted in different directions.
An issue that’s much easier to understand is a bureaucratic policy of the Internal Revenue Service that is both anti-senior and anti-small business.
Many older Americans want or need to continue working after reaching age 65, and many responsible employers want to continue paying for their health insurance if they do. However, IRS rules essentially prevent this.
Health premiums paid by a company to a worker younger than 65 are not taxable to the employee. However, after employees reach 65 and are forced by insurance companies to switch to Medicare and supplements, employers are forbidden to pay their premiums unless the employees are taxed on them.
The only alternative appears to be if the company creates a special program, overseen by a third-party administrator, to which payments are made and from which withdrawals to buy insurance are allowed if the administrator approves them.
That’s a huge bureaucratic burden on small businesses. It essentially forces them to choose whether their employees suddenly will be taxed for what they used to get for free or whether the employer must create a costly bureaucracy or inflate insurance payments by enough to cover taxes on them.
Even calculating how much to increase payments would impose an accounting burden on already overly stressed small businesses.
America should encourage workers who want or need to remain on the job after age 65 and should encourage businesses that are willing to pay for their insurance. Instead, bureaucrats have created page after page of regulations that discourage businesses and seniors.
This isn’t an issue of the right of the left. You can’t spin the question one way or another to come up with a different answer. It’s simply a matter of fairness — fairness to seniors and fairness to small businesses.
Imagine how satisfying it would be if, instead of filling anti-social media and cable-news spinmeister shows with other complicated issues, our country and its politicians would take a breather and address things that are just clearly wrong.
— ERIC MEYER