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Comment by PaulDavisThe1st | Hacker News Reader

Line 17, Schedule 1: "Self-employed health insurance deduction"

https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi#en_US_2024_publink1...

"You may be able to deduct the amount you paid for health insurance (which includes medical, dental, and vision insurance and qualified long-term care insurance) for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. "

"One of the following statements must be true.

    You were self-employed and had a net profit for the year reported on Schedule C or F.

    You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment.

    You used one of the optional methods to figure your net earnings from self-employment on Schedule SE.

    You received wages in 2024 from an S corporation in which you were a more-than-2% shareholder. Health insurance premiums paid or reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2.

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> "Self-employed"

I.e. it's deductible for your business.

My point stands.

We had some ambiguity here about what "paying for your own health insurance" actually means, so I am not sure either of our points really stand. Or maybe they both do ...

On the one hand: health insurance premiums are entirely deductible if you have schedule C income that exceeds their value. This covers more or less all self-employed people, who are the largest group paying for their own insurance.

On the other hand: health insurance premiums are not deductible if you do not have schedule C income that exceeds their value (and/or are eligible for an employer subsidized insurance policy), which means there is still a sizable and significant group of people paying for their own insurance and not able to deduct it.

I am sure you know my own preferred answer: convert all health insurance premiums into taxes that fund a single payer system, so that there is no difference between self-employed "self payers" and non-self-employed "self payers".

Given that we're unlikely to see that before I'm pushing up daisies, I would agree that either any health insurance premium paid by the insured should be tax deductible or none of it should be, to level the playing field. I think I slightly prefer the none solution, but I'm not actively against the all version.

> We had some ambiguity here

It's clear you know what I meant.

Not to me. I did not consider the situation of employed people who still had to pay for their own insurance in my initial response.

And the reason employed people can't choose their own insurance is that they don't get tax deduction then, so they are left at the mercy of their company.

That's misleading. If the company doesn't provide insurance, they can choose whatever insurance they want (it will not be tax deductible, which may impact its affordability).

It's not misleading or ambiguous. As a bystander to this discussion I'm shaking my head wondering whether you are doing this on purpose.

The vast majority of employed people have a single reasonable choice: to take their employers insurance. Anything else would be much more expensive because of lack of deduction. When they change jobs, they are again at the mercy of their (new) employer. Sure there are self-employed folks, and it's different for them, but this thread is not about them. And of course most people with their own insurance choice are self employed precisely because everybody else doesn't really have a choice, which is the whole point.

So, can we please stop with this smoke screen? My popcorn reserves are running low.

I don't agree with your premise regarding "what this thread is about".

It's obvious that you don't, and that's why a number of people have pointed it out to you.

You’re on an unrelated tangent about self employed people and the thread is about people tied to their employer through health insurance. This thread is not about self employed people.

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