Vermonters who purchased health insurance from Vermont Health Connect for any portion of 2014 should receive a tax form in the mail by the end of next week, state officials said Thursday.
If a person who purchased insurance through the exchange does not receive IRS form 1095-A, they should call Vermont Health Connect at 855-899-9600.
Customers will receive a form regardless of whether they received advanced premium tax credit subsidies. People who did not receive subsidies will need to include information from the form in their income tax filing to avoid paying a federal penalty for not having health insurance.
People with Medicaid, Medicare, catastrophic plans or employer-sponsored insurance will not receive a 1095-A.
Those who have received subsidies for all or part of the year will need to use the information in their 1095-A when filing their personal income taxes in order to reconcile the amount of premium assistance they received monthly, which is based on an estimate of their income, with their actual income for the year. It’s possible people will owe money to the federal government, or that they will get additional tax credits after filing.
People who made changes to their coverage during the year, had a change in their income or canceled their plan should pay close attention to whether the information on the form is accurate.
The exchange has carried a backlog of requested cancellations and changes to people’s coverage for the entire year. That has led to people receiving incorrect invoices or continuing to receive invoices after they canceled their plan.
Contractors and the state were never able to automate a process for those changes to be made online. Changes are being made manually, which has slowed the process and introduced a higher likelihood of errors occurring. There are still close to 200 change requests to people’s 2014 coverage that the state has not processed, officials said.
If the information on the form is incorrect, recipients should notify Vermont Health Connect and a new 1095-A will be issued. For people who respond quickly, the state hopes to have revised forms mailed back to them by mid-February. Others will be handled on a case-by-case basis, officials said.
Officials had no estimate of how many people may need corrected forms as the result of problems with the exchange.
There are caps on the amount of premium assistance people could have to repay the federal government. Those values are in a chart below this article. The IRS can also set up payment plans to allow people to pay back the additional subsidies over time.
Vermont Health Connect cannot help people file their taxes, but call center workers will direct people to services that can. Customers can contact their tax preparer, call 211 to find local tax prep assistance or visit the IRS website.
The state mailed close to 25,000 tax forms this week, and some households will receive more than one because of the way their plans are structured, officials said.
Roughly 31,000 people had commercial insurance through the exchange for some portion of 2014. Of that group, 36 percent did not receive premium subsidies, 10 percent received only federal premium assistance and 54 percent received both state and federal premium assistance.
Vermont offers additional premium help to individuals making up to $35,010 or a family of four making up to $71,550, while federal premium assistance is available to individuals making up to $46,680 or a family of four making $95,400.
State premium assistance does not need to be reflected on people’s income tax filings. Vermont can recapture overpayments of state premium assistance, but is only likely to do so if it suspects fraud, officials said.
