IRS 100% Accurate on Early Subsidy Calculations, Audit Finds
The Internal Revenue Service was 100% accurate from Oct. 1, 2013, to Oct. 14, 2013, in calculating the maximum monthly insurance subsidies for individuals purchasing coverage through the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges, according to an audit released Tuesday by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, Reuters reports (Morgan, Reuters, 8/5).
Background
The report comes amid concerns that IRS might have miscalculated subsidy amounts for more than one million U.S. residents (Viebeck, The Hill, 8/5). In June, CMS reported that coverage applications from about one in four enrollees, or slightly more than two million people, had discrepancies with federal records. Those applications included roughly 1.2 million people who filed applications with inconsistent information about their annual incomes (California Healthline, 6/5). The Obama administration has notified hundreds of thousands of people who acquired subsidized health coverage through the Affordable Care Act's insurance exchanges of the need to verify their eligibility or risk having to pay back some of those funds next year or lose their coverage altogether (California Healthline, 6/16).
Audit Details
The audit found that IRS accurately calculated all 120,824 requests received by the agency during the first two weeks of the initial enrollment period for the exchanges.
Further, TIGTA found that IRS provided the insurance exchanges with accurate information regarding applicants' incomes and family sizes in 100,985 of 101,018 -- or 99.97% -- of the cases examined from Oct. 1, 2013, to Oct 4, 2013 (Reuters, 8/5).
However, the audit also found that IRS incorrectly stated that it could not verify consumers' information in 33 cases because of a computer glitch (The Hill, 8/5).
As of March, IRS received about 11 million requests relating to insurance subsidies and more than 27 million requests for information about insurance applicants' family sizes and incomes, according to Reuters (Reuters, 8/5).
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