1099 provision repealed?

[DSeid]

The provision to require additional 1099 reporting as part of the funding for the Healthcare Reform Act was widely unpopular, especially with small to medium sized businesses.

Seems like it may be going bye bye.

February 2, 2011 — The Senate today took an indirect but decisive step toward repealing an unpopular tax-form provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The piece of paper in question is federal tax form 1099. Under the ACA, all businesses, including medical practices, must file a 1099 with the Internal Revenue Service beginning in 2012 if they purchase $600 or more worth of goods or services in a given year from any vendor. Right now, businesses need to file it only for services provided by unincorporated businesses, such as sole proprietors. Organized medicine views the expanded reporting duty as unduly burdensome.

In an 81 to 17 vote today, the Senate amended a bill to reauthorize and modernize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) with a provision that eliminates the new 1099 requirement.

With the encouragement of President Barack Obama, Congress has been attempting to delete the 1099 requirement in the ACA since last fall. However, lawmakers have disagreed on how to offset the estimated $19 billion that the provision would raise in the form of tax revenue (the assumption being that the IRS would spot previously unreported vendor revenue). According to the amendment passed today, the White House Office of Management and Budget would identify where to make the cuts. Unobligated funds of the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Social Security Administration are off-limits.

Opponents of the amendment, such as Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), said that Congress, not the White House, should exercise the budget-cutting ax.

The repeal of the new 1099 reporting duty will not be final until Congress passes the FAA bill. An aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told Medscape Medical News that the Senate could vote on the FAA measure as early as next week.

Not quite sure why this is not getting wider coverage. I know it is not revolution in Egypt but still.

Put in GD because its healthcare reform and bound to be debatogenic.

[foolsguinea]

Well, good. I for one did not see the PPACA (or whatever we call the giant bill) as an all-or-nothing thing. Strip out a couple of the more objectionable things, keep the necessary things like the Medicaid expansion, & it’s pretty good, if somewhat conservative, lawmaking.

[Simplicio]

I can’t get to the linked article, so appologies if this stuff was already addressed there.

Is it constitutional to just give the Prez the unilateral power to cut spending whereever he wants? Seems kinda dicey.

Plus, IIRC the reason this wasn’t eliminated earlier was because the Dems wanted to fund it by cutting subsidies to the oil industry and the GOP wouldn’t allow that. Won’t Obama just enact the original Dem plan? I certainly don’t have any problem with that, but seems weird that the GOP would block the spending cuts but then agree to have them enacted in such a round-about mechanism. Especially given that cutting oil company subsidies is probably one of the more popular types of spending cuts amongst the Plebs.

[flickster]

Sounds like our Senate trying to throw the American Public a bone and hoping they’ll be satisfied with that.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good thing - but if it is the last of their efforts toward repeal, it will be another election season full of incumbents being retired in 2012.

As for the 1099 requirement repeal, will this also reduce the requirement for the thousands of IRS agents that were going to be hired?