While migrating saved blog posts in 2020, I came across this one; it is not currently on my old Blogger blog and I’m not sure if it ever was.
I have an appointment to pay taxes tomorrow.
As my brother-in-law reminds me, I should be grateful that I have enough income to owe taxes.
We finally got some paperwork out of the state of MI. For most of 2015 the children were covered by a state insurance program that they were put on when I was unemployed and eligible for benefits. That’s all great, and it was a big help to have them covered.
The problem is, just as with food benefits, going OFF benefits is at least as difficult as getting on them. Grace and I were cut off when I had a new job, but the kids were not.
We kept trying to get, in writing, some information on when the kids’ coverage. We had printed notices that they were covered, so I did not have them covered under my work plan when I signed up. We never could get a straight answer from the state, despite numerous tries.
We finally got an answer in the form of tax form 1095-B. That tells me that all the kids were taken off the state plan at the end of July. So the kids have not had any health coverage since then, and we had no notice about this from the state.
I am grateful they are all healthy and so have not needed any kind of health care, but that is nerve-wracking. We’re no doubt going to have to pay some kind of fine for not having them insured for the remainder of 2015 (and then again next year for this year to date).
And I think we are locked out of getting them onto my employer plan until the next open enrollment period, which may not be for months. I have to double check that. But in any case I think we’re going to owe some kind of penalty this year, and next year, which is going to really screw with plans to use my refunded Federal tax to pay city tax and pay down debts so we can get one step closer to getting our whole family living together again, somewhere closer to where I work. Thanks, Obama! And Michigan too! Dickweeds!