Skip to footer

Tax season here. 7 changes for 2015 (and 9 of the weirdest deductions)

The deadline to file your tax returns is still a few months off, but it’s time to begin gathering documents and figuring out what you need to pay – and, more importantly, what you can write off. To help you fill out your 2014 returns and plan for 2015, here are few tax changes, big and small, for 2015. Plus, as a bonus, we’ve included nine of the most peculiar deductions allowed by the US tax code.

1. Affordable Care Act: Increased penalty, PTC credit

Damian Dovarganes/AP/File
An Estimated Tax form at H&R Block tax preparation office in the Echo Park district of Los Angeles. There aren't many major changes for taxes in 2015, but two of the biggest come from the Affordable Care Act.

Compared with last year, when the Affordable Care Act took effect, there are relatively few major changes to income taxes this year. But like 2014, the two biggest changes for 2015 tax filing come thanks to Obamacare. The first is an increase in the penalty for not having health insurance. When they file returns this year, taxpayers who didn’t have proper insurance coverage in 2014 will pay a fine of 1 percent of their household income or $95 per household member (whichever was higher). If you aren’t insured for 2015, the fine on your 2015 returns will jump up to 2 percent of household income, or $325 per person. If you want to avoid getting socked with serious fines in the future (over $1,200 for a family of four) the deadline to sign up for coverage this year is February 2015.

If you have coverage, all you have to do is check a box on your tax return. You may also qualify for an exemption to the penalty: the list of exemptions from the IRS can be found here.

The second big change is the debut of the premium tax credit (PTC), a refund available to families who get their health coverage through state-run exchanges. You qualify, generally, if your household income is between 100 and 400 percent of the federal poverty line and you don’t have access to an employee-sponsored health plan. The amount of the credit varies, but you can either claim it with your insurance company to lower your monthly premiums, or you can claim it on your yearly tax return.

1 of 16
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.