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The costs that corporations say they will have to pay because of the new health legislation continue to climb as Verizon Communications said it will post a one-time charge of $970 million in the first quarter.<\/p>\nThe costs that corporations say they will have to pay because of the new health legislation continue to climb as Verizon Communications said it will post a one-time charge of $970 million in the first quarter.<\/p>\n
The overhaul blocks companies from deducting tax-free subsidies they get from Washington for providing retirees with prescription-drug benefits. That change doesn’t kick in until 2013, but companies are taking the charges now in anticipation. <\/p>\n
That’s a bone of contention as the Obama administration officials have said companies are exaggerating the overhaul’s impact because they don’t like the new law. The charges are only a bookkeeping move and don’t require cash payouts by the companies, but corporate tax bills will eventually go up.<\/p>\n
First-quarter charges related to the retiree drug benefits for companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index could reach $4.5 billion and affect as many as 1,400 corporations, some analysts say. <\/p>\n
Companies with large groups of retirees will be affected most by the change. AT&T<\/a> last week announced a $1 billion charge; Verizon’s charge of $970 million is the second largest so far, according to Dow Jones Newswires. Others high on the list include, Deere & Co. ($150 million), Boeing ($150 million), Caterpillar ($100 million) and Prudential Financial ($100 million). <\/p>\n Since the Medicare Part D program was enacted in 2003, the federal government has been providing the tax-free payments to the companies as an incentive to maintain their drug-benefit programs. More on the charges is here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Image: iStockphoto<\/em><\/p>\n The costs that corporations say they will have to pay because of the new health legislation continue to climb as Verizon Communications said it will post a one-time charge of $970 million in the first quarter. The overhaul blocks companies from deducting tax-free subsidies they get from Washington for providing retirees with prescription-drug benefits. That […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-504887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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