The CEO Pay Tax Break in the Republican Health Care Proposal

[CousinIT]

The House Republican plan to replace the Affordable Care Act would give health insurance companies a huge tax break on their executive compensation, encouraging them to dole out even larger pay packages to their already overpaid top managers.

The plan would re-introduce a tax loophole that allows corporations unlimited deductions for executive pay — as long as the pay is in the form of stock options or other so-called “performance” compensation. Obamacare eliminated this loophole for health insurance companies, imposing a strict $500,000 limit on deductions for the expense of each executive’s compensation. This set an important precedent for reducing taxpayer subsidies for CEO pay.

To better understand the taxpayer savings from the Obamacare CEO pay reform, the Institute for Policy Studies has analyzed executive pay at the five largest U.S. publicly held health insurance companies in 2015, the most recent year for which data are available for all five firms, in the report The CEO Pay Tax Break in the Republican Health Care Proposal.

• The ACA deductibility limits generated an estimated $92 million in additional public revenue in 2015 from just these companies (Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana, and UnitedHealth). On average, these corporations owed an extra $3.5 million in taxes per executive.

• This $92 million in savings from limiting pay-related deductions for just 26 executives is the equivalent of the average annual ACA premium subsidies for 28,500 Americans. . . .

http://www.ips-dc.org/report-the-ceo-pay-tax-break-in-the-republican-health-care-proposal/

[democratisphere]

1. Where is the HUMONGOUS outrage for this massive show of corporate and government corruption.

[briv1016]

2. A simple bribe.

How else are they going to keep the insurance companies from lobbying against a bill that kicks 24 million people off of private insurance?

[Wellstone ruled]

3. Tomorrow will be PayDay for many

of those Rethugs. Do remember the Zell Miller deal yet today. What did he get for his vote,2.5million a year lobbying deal. Today's Republican Party will roll over and take their checks and smile at the Camera's and lie about how they did their best to help those poor folk down in the Hollows.