Most of us fortunate to have employer sponsored health insurance never give second thought to the fact that what our employer spends on us is tax-free income, many thousands of dollars each year in fact. We also don’t consider that the value of that tax break is unrelated to income. That is, whether you make $30,000 a year or $130,000, your employer may be spending $12,000 or more on your health benefits.
What would happen if all or a portion of that we’re to become taxable income (without the additional cash to pay the taxes)? We may get the chance to find out!
A new report from the General Accountability Office takes a look at all the tax breaks Americans receive. The report’s listed examples of “tax expenditures” includes exclusions from taxable income (such as the current exclusion of employer-paid health care premium contributions) and deferrals (such as pre-tax contributions to defined contribution arrangements). According to the Office of Management and Budget’s most recent budget proposal, health and retirement plan contribution incentives respectively constitute the first and second-largest expenditures in the federal budget.
The first and second largest expenditures; some would call that low hanging fruit.
Read the full report here.
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QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
What we have here is a 40 page report which lightly explains how the government gets involved in picking economic winners and losers through the tax code while at the same time vastly complicating the code, providing jobs to corporate lobbyists and creating a funding source for reelection campaigns.
In 1986, the last major tax reform, got rid of many expenditures but since then they have returned with a vengeance due to powerful lobbies, special interest groups and political favors to ensure reelection.
It’s time to reform the entire tax code, get rid of all the tax expenditures and ensure that spending programs are not effected through the tax code again. If a politician feels that some group, individual or business is worthy of public largess for economic or social reasons, let them make their case and mail a check.
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