Comment by PaulDavisThe1st
21 days ago
Line 17, Schedule 1: "Self-employed health insurance deduction"
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2024_publink1...
"You may be able to deduct the amount you paid for health insurance (which includes medical, dental, and vision insurance and qualified long-term care insurance) for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. "
"One of the following statements must be true.
You were self-employed and had a net profit for the year reported on Schedule C or F.
You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment.
You used one of the optional methods to figure your net earnings from self-employment on Schedule SE.
You received wages in 2024 from an S corporation in which you were a more-than-2% shareholder. Health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2.
> "Self-employed"
I.e. it's deductible for your business.
My point stands.
We had some ambiguity here about what "paying for your own health insurance" actually means, so I am not sure either of our points really stand. Or maybe they both do ...
On the one hand: health insurance premiums are entirely deductible if you have schedule C income that exceeds their value. This covers more or less all self-employed people, who are the largest group paying for their own insurance.
On the other hand: health insurance premiums are not deductible if you do not have schedule C income that exceeds their value (and/or are eligible for an employer subsidized insurance policy), which means there is still a sizable and significant group of people paying for their own insurance and not able to deduct it.
I am sure you know my own preferred answer: convert all health insurance premiums into taxes that fund a single payer system, so that there is no difference between self-employed "self payers" and non-self-employed "self payers".
Given that we're unlikely to see that before I'm pushing up daisies, I would agree that either any health insurance premium paid by the insured should be tax deductible or none of it should be, to level the playing field. I think I slightly prefer the none solution, but I'm not actively against the all version.
You’re on an unrelated tangent about self employed people and the thread is about people tied to their employer through health insurance. This thread is not about self employed people.
> We had some ambiguity here
It's clear you know what I meant.
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