In the Black: September 2025
Obamacare premiums: big changes coming
What’s happening: The new 900-page monster tax bill contains what’s known as a subsidy cliff. What that means is that if you have ACA/ Obamacare insurance and your income exceeds the allowed limit by even $1, you may lose all subsidies/ tax credits, which, for many Americans, was making this an affordable choice, especially as private insurance prices rise.
How this will work is that if you do nothing, when we file taxes at year's end, you may have to repay any underpaid healthcare premiums.
Who is this going to affect? Many small business owners have insurance through ACA, as it’s easier than taking on a private policy if you don’t have any or very few employees. Also affected will be older adults who don’t qualify yet for Medicare.
What to do:
Find out if you are going to be affected. You should have just received an email from us about your Q3 estimated tax payments, where we are asking about your anticipated income for 2025. It’s important that we figure this out - not just for taxes but so that you can take this number and see if you are going to be one of the people that ‘fall off the cliff”.
Make a plan. If you are very close to the edge, you can use a pre-tax retirement account contribution or an HSA contribution to lower your income and keep your subsidy, so that will be a good move for some. If you can squeak by for 2025, you may still need to make a new plan for 2026 if your premiums are affected. So be sure you know what they are going to be so you can budget//plan accordingly!
Long Story Short: If you are on Obamacare, you’ll need to figure out your estimated income for 2025, contact your Marketplace rep or look up if you’ll be affected and adjust accordingly so there are no nasty surprises at tax time, We can help figure out the income piece but you’ll need to loop in a rep to figure out if you’ll be affected.
Q3 estimates are due 9/15: So be sure to get back to us if you haven’t already, so we can adjust your estimates as needed.