Silly woman.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

Doesn't she know she's not as important as her bosses? She should be lucky they deign to pay her at all!

Comments

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

Jeff,

Basic health care isn't something one can choose or choose not to buy. Reproductive care is basic health care. No different to screening for male only cancers or treating male only disorders.

Nobody is trying to argue that employers should be allowed to deny men basic health care as part of insurance, but seemingly you think it's okay to discriminate against women and to deny them basic healthcare as part of their insurance.

Basic health care has a huge impact on people's lives. It extends them, makes them healthier, improves productivity and generally is GOOD for a company, companies make more money with a healthy productive workforce. The objection to providing basic healthcare to women has fuck all to do with logic or reasonable business behaviour and everything to do with bigotry and discrimination.

If you truly believe the crap you're spouting, kindly lobby (and prove you have lobbied) your representatives to have MALE basic healthcare fall under the same rules. If women can be expected to "choose" to pay for basic healthcare despite having insurance already, so can men.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure why your entire metric for benefits being considered being part of your pay is "does the government acknowledge it?," but if it makes you feel better....

It doesn't, it somehow became part of the argument for it being a wage.

With that said, the new HCR reg is not for taxation purposes, but for individual mandate purposes, similar to the form I get from my insurance company in MA.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'd love to see male AND female care under the same rules, yes - no mandates to purchase from the government. You'll get no inconsistency from me here.

[lilenth.livejournal.com]

Then put your money where your mouth is and demonstrate it by lobbying for men to be treated the same as you think women should be treated.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

The only reason you are not taxed is because the legislature has created tax exemptions for compensation coming in those manners. You literally aren't taxed because the government wants to incent those types of activities.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

See "Employee Compensation" on page 3 [edit: corrected page]

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p525.pdf

Everything is income, you get exemptions for certain types of actions. Income tax deductions as with all marginal taxation will reduce your tax bracket (if it hits at that margin)

Welcome to "the real world of income taxation" circa 1000 BC

You don't get an exemption because you bartered, you don't get an exemption because it was not cash. There are non-cash income types which are exempted, but not because they're not income.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

When benefits are cut that only affect one gender, like this case, then it's a problem.

[american-geist.livejournal.com]

"Unionization isn't good for employers."

Tell that to the 1890's.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm too busy putting my money toward issues of free speech and property rights. This is a very low issue on the totem pole.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So you, in fact, were wrong. Not me. Good to know.

[mikepictor.livejournal.com]

Semantics. It's docking her compensation.

Benefits are part of what a person will use to decide to work for one place or another. People don't just look at the dollar figure, but the entire compensation that is gained from a given workspace. Losing some of that compensation is a loss of some of the aspects of that job (possibly hard fought and bargained) that drove them to choose that workplace.

A company turning around and tossing a benefit out the window is the same as tossing some of the cash portion of the compensation out the window. Same job, less compensation.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

"In most cases, the value of accident or health plan coverage provided to you by your employer is not included in your income."

So no, everything is not income. Welcome to the real world of income taxation, 2012.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Semantics. It's docking her compensation.

It's changing her compensation, absolutely. No disagreement. You want to call it semantics, but there's a significant difference between wages and benefits that people want to ignore.

[mikepictor.livejournal.com]

Oh really? Heart disease is more prevalent in men, should coverage of prescription medication to treat it be affected because of that?

[mikepictor.livejournal.com]

no...there isn't really, not in this situation. It's a lost of some of the conditions under which she agreed to work for this company.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

And where is it implied that she agreed to work for a static form of health benefits?

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Do you understand the concept of an "exemption"?

Do you also understand that those things are called "Non taxable income"? Not "not income" or "not compensation" or "not pay" but literally "income that we aren't going to tax you on"

So in addition to the more comprehensive link from my other reply you can see this where the IRS is most definitely considering it income.

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=179077,00.html

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

"not included in your income" does not mean its not your pay, it means its not included on your income statement as it has been exempted. As the document in question makes great pains to explain.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

And even if the IRS chooses to call it income for tax purposes, that doesn't make it income anyway. I don't know why I'm even bothering trying to rationalize it on your terms when your terms aren't even correct.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

So no, everything is not income.

Of course, that's just for taxation purposes.

Outside of taxation, people consider the coverage plans they receive part of the payment they get from an employer.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

They see it as a benefit. That's why they're called "benefits" and not "wages."

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

You are paid those things in return for your labor. It is your pay, you are paid them to do a job and if you were not paid them you would go somewhere else. When companies look at benefits they include them in their compensation evaluation. They do this because they know its pay.

When you're taxed, certain types of benefits are exempted, because the governments wants to have businesses provide those benefits rather than cash. But those benefits are still your pay, and the government is going to explain what parts of your pay you don't have to be taxed on and what parts of your pay you do.

Do you understand the concept of free exchange of goods and services? Whatever you get in exchange, even if its not cash, is your pay for what you provided!

Not even the craziest of Austrians or Communists dispute this fact.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

So why are some benefits taxed and other benefits not taxed? They're both called benefits.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Do you understand the concept of free exchange of goods and services? Whatever you get in exchange, even if its not cash, is your pay for what you provided!

It's compensation, sure. It's not a wage, however, it's a benefit. That's the point.

[mylaptopisevil.livejournal.com]

The government sees it as a benefit because they don't tax it.

When the government doesn't see it as a benefit they call it income.

But, once again, I'm not sure why you're using "the government says so" as the metric for if people count it as part of the money they're paid for a job.

Fun fact!

For gay couples in areas where the government does not recognize gay marriage, BUT the company still offers them insurance for their partner, they have to pay taxes for it.