ObamaCare's 1099 form quasi-tax

If you own a business, the chances are most of your transactions will cost more than $600. Imagine you are the chief financial officer of a large corporation such as Caterpillar or Abbot Labs---how many $601 transactions does your firm perform?

Thanks to ObamaCare, the federal government will find out. CNN tells us about this quasi-tax.

Section 9006 of the health care bill -- just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document -- mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year.

The stealth change radically alters the nature of 1099s and means businesses will have to issue millions of new tax documents each year.

Right now, the IRS Form 1099 is used to document income for individual workers other than wages and salaries. Freelancers receive them each year from their clients, and businesses issue them to the independent contractors they hire.

But under the new rules, if a freelance designer buys a new iMac from the Apple Store, they'll have to send Apple a 1099. A laundromat that buys soap each week from a local distributor will have to send the supplier a 1099 at the end of the year tallying up their purchases.

Hope and change, baby.

Oh, there is an election in November.

Repeal and replace.

Technorati tags: politics news health universal health care health care reform obamacare Obama Barack Obama business democrats