Well, we asked for it and now here is a flavor of what we will get with Obamacare.

I just wonder where all the angry voices who cried out against the Patriot Act are? This is even worse!

Read more:

The Internal Revenue Service would gain sweeping new powers under President Obama's healthcare reform proposals.

Is this a dangerous expansion of IRS powers?

Among the new powers the IRS would assume: The authority to confiscate tax refunds, to impose fines of over $2,200 per taxpayer, and to verify whether taxpayers' health insurance coverage is "acceptable.”

Acceptable? By who’s standards?

One measure of the scope of the IRS' new responsibilities under the healthcare overhaul: The agency might have to hire as many as 16,500 additional auditors, agents, and other employees in order to administer the program.

Well, this is also a jobs bill!

Healthcare reform as having a wide-ranging impact on how the IRS operates, including:

·                   IRS agents would be tasked with determining whether Americans had obtained the insurance coverage required under the individual mandate.

·                   Individuals could be fined $2,250 or 2 percent of income, whichever is greater, if you are unable to prove you have "minimum essential coverage."

·                   The IRS would be empowered to confiscate tax refunds if necessary.

·                   Audits probably would increase as a result of the legislation's new requirements.

·                   The budget for IRS operations will balloon by $10 billion in the next decade in order to administrate the new program.

·                   Nearly half of the new individual mandate taxes will be paid "by Americans earning less than 300 percent of poverty, $66150 for a family of four.

Experts say that healthcare reform would "fundamentally alter the relationship between the IRS and taxpayers”. They add that essentially, the reform bill makes the IRS responsible for "tracking the monthly health insurance status of roughly 300 million Americans."

They express the concern that reform would alter the IRS' traditional mission of collecting revenue, and adding a social-program delivery function to its portfolio.

Ironically, two groups of residents would be declared exempt from IRS enforcement measures, according to the Republicans: One is illegal immigrants who aren't supposed to be included in the insurance exchanges in the first place. The other consists of people who are incarcerated.

Well folks, I guess this is the change that we wanted to believe in. There will undoubtedly be more to come.

Newsmax.com