Taxpayers hit by health data errors don’t need to refile

Government sent wrong information; 50,000 affected.

WASHINGTON — Taxpayers who’ve filed their 2014 returns only to learn that the government provided them with erroneous information on health care subsidies won’t be required to submit corrected returns, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.

The decision amounts to a reprieve from paperwork headaches for an estimated 50,000 early filers, out of a pool of some 800,000 HealthCare.gov customers affected by a tax reporting goof disclosed last week.

The majority who haven’t yet filed their tax returns are still being urged to wait until they get corrected information from the government.

The announcement means those who have filed would save time, effort, and any additional tax preparation fees for correcting returns with erroneous details. “The IRS will not pursue the collection of any additional taxes from these individuals based on updated information in the corrected forms,” said the Treasury statement.

A Treasury official said the government determined that the errors are not significant enough to require taxpayers to refile returns already submitted.

President Barack Obama’s law provides subsidized private health insurance to people who

President Barack Obama’s health care law has steadily reduced the number of uninsured Americans, according to a survey. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index found that the share of adults without health insurance dropped to its lowest level in seven years in 2014.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell told Congress that there is no administrative action that would fix the“massive damage to our health care system” that would result should the Supreme Court invalidate federal subsidies that help millions of Americans buy health care coverage. A ruling is expected in June. don’t have access to coverage on the job. Because those subsidies are delivered as a tax credit, people who benefit from them have to account to the IRS that they got the correct amount they were legally entitled to.

That’s done on the tax return, with the help of a new form called a 1095A. But HHS officials disclosed that forms sent to about 800,000 people contained wrong information.