Subject: Taxing health and other employee benefits. Comment: Taxing health benefits is crazy for a number of reasons. First, it would drive employers even further out of the business of providing benefits to their employees. If an employer did choose to maintain some level of healthe benefits for it's employees, such benefits would be either substantially redused or the employer's contribution woud be substantilally increase, or both. It's not beyond belief that the entire premium would be made the employee's responsibility. Second, employees, faced with this increased cost of their benefits would either severly limit their coverage or drop coverage all together. This would be especially true of younger, healthier workers thereby skewing the actuarial calculation of premiums which would be then based on an older, less health universe, necessitating a dramatic rise in premiums. |