Ayotte Discusses Impact of Health Insurance Tax on Small Business

MANCHESTER, NH – U.S. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-NH, joined local small business owners recently in Manchester to discuss how the health insurance tax, or HIT, is impacting local businesses and employees, according to a press statement.

The event was hosted by the Stop the HIT Coalition, a broad based group representing the nation’s small business owners, their employees and the self-employed.

“I've heard from small businesses in New Hampshire that the Health Insurance Tax is hurting them, causing them to facing higher premiums and costs that they just can’t afford," Ayotte said. "They tell me it's driving their insurance costs up and limiting companies' ability to invest in new technologies, hire more employees, and provide raises and additional benefits for existing employees. I appreciated hearing from New Hampshire business owners about how this tax is impacting their businesses and employees. As the wife of a small business owner, I will continue to work to help boost small businesses in the U.S. Senate."

The HIT is an often-overlooked tax in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that significantly drives up health insurance costs for millions of small businesses. The tax will amount to $159 billion in new costs during the next decade, which will be almost entirely passed on to small businesses and the self-employed who purchase coverage in the fully insured marketplace.

The tax raises the cost of health insurance premiums for families by approximately $500 a year, according to an analysis by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

“If they don’t repeal the tax, it’s ultimately going to kill jobs and its severely going to hurt the economy,” predicted Kevin Smith, Londonderry Town Manager. “We need more job growth and we need economic growth and if the tax isn’t repealed we’re not going to see the growth that we need in town.”

“We need relief and we need it now because we can’t continue to contract talent which we desperately need in this part of the country unless we have incentives," said Frank Wells, the managing director for Hoyle, Tanner and Associate, one of New Hampshire’s leading engineering firms. “One of the big incentives is affordable health care for all of our people. We have finite resources; we can only do so much we can only direct those resources to certain places.”

New Hampshire is known as a state driven by small businesses, which employ more than 75 percent of all workers. According to research by the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation, the HIT will jeopardize between 152,000 to 286,000 private-sector jobs across the U.S. by 2023, and reduce real GDP by as much as $20 billion to $33 billion over the same period.

Senator Ayotte is a cosponsor of S.183 - Jobs and Premium Protection Act; a companion bill, H.R. 928, is in the U.S. House of Representatives, that would repeal the HIT and permanently relieve small businesses of this burdensome tax.

At the end of 2015, Senator Ayotte joined with a bipartisan majority of her colleagues on Capitol Hill to pass legislation that suspends the impact of the HIT tax for one-year. This is a welcome and important first step towards giving Americans much needed permanent relief through a full repeal of the HIT.

Submitted by Stop the HIT Coalition. For more information, please visit StopTheHIT.com.