re: #212 Desert Dog

The IRS does not have the ability to see if you are buying insurance right now. I would assume insurance companies would send in a form telling our friends at the IRS if Mr. or Mrs. Citizen has, in fact, purchased insurance. Then, if that does not show up on your return…well, ve hav vays of making you buy!

That’s the way it works in Massachusetts now. The insurance companies send you a form indicating which months you had insurance, and you have to fill out a form giving that information, with the insurance forms as proof, kind of like W-2’s. (You might not have to fill out the separate form if you had insurance all year; I don’t remember now.)
In Mass, you don’t need insurance 100% of the time to avoid the penalty, though; I believe you have 60 or 90 days before any penalty and then it is pro-rated. Actually, it goes by month, and counts the number of months you had insurance less than half the time. That was good, because we avoided paying an extra month of COBRA just to get a few days’ coverage before my job started. The COBRA coverage went by calendar month, and my job started a few days after the start of the month.