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Samuel Said:

Should you have your health insurance premiums deducted before taxes?

We Answered:

If you elect to have your share of health care premiums paid pretax, your withholding will be tweaked to adjust for this automatically.

The difference is instead of making $20,000 at the end of the year, your W-2 will say you made $18,500. This is less income, less tax and generally a good thing. (It does reduce your income for social security purposes, but I haven't seen any persuasive logic that paying for health care post tax now will give you enough extra money in retirement to justify not doing it.)

Herbert Said:

As an individual buyer (non-small biz) of health insurance, can I deduct the premium from my taxes?

We Answered:

First of all you must determine if you should use standard deductions or itemize your deductions. If you are using standard deduction the answer is NO! Those type expenses are already considered. If you itemize you may add the cost of health insurance and long term care insurance to your medical expenses. They will be subject to an exclusion or limitation of 7.5 % of your AGI. Which means that the exclusion must be exceeded before there is any net benefit.

Andrew Said:

How much will my taxes and insurance premiums increase under Obomanable Care?

We Answered:

20% is better than the 40% increase we saw this year with no reform bill isn't it.