Today almost 160 million people in the United States obtain health insurance through an employer in large part because the tax system subsidizes the purchase of employer-sponsored coverage. The current subsidy costs the U.S. Treasury more than $200 billion in lost revenue because premiums for employer-provided health coverage are excluded from income taxes and from payroll taxes.
A new issue brief by Kaiser Family Foundation researchers, Tax Subsidies for Health Insurance, uses examples of workers with different wage earnings to illustrate how the current tax code affects families depending on whether they have health coverage, and whether that coverage is provided through their employer. By excluding the value of employer-sponsored health benefits from taxable income, the current law generally provides a larger subsidy to higher-income families, since higher-income workers pay federal and state income taxes at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-income workers. Read the issue brief.
