How to Get A Bigger Tax Refund For People With Marketplace Insurance in 2023

The time to file your taxes for 2023 and collect your refund checks is here. If you had marketplace health insurance during 2023 you may qualify for a bigger tax refund if you received advanced premium tax credits AND you made less than income in 2023 from what you put on your health insurance application. To figure out if you must first reconcile your tax premium credits with your accountant and they will be able to tell you if you will be getting more money back on your refund. We will give some basic information and examples to explain how this works for those who had coverage during the year, even if it was only for a few months.

In the mail, you should have received form 1095-A which contains information about your monthly premiums and how many credits you received that helped pay for your premium. If you cannot find it or didn’t receive it in the mail, you can log into your account on healthcare.gov to find it. This link contains a PDF with step-by-step instructions on how to find it. Once you have this form 1095-A you must verify the numbers are correct from this past year.

Your accountant can then use form 1095-A to complete form 8962. This form simply compares your actual income with the estimated income that you put on your health insurance application. If your 2023 income was lower, you can get back more money during your tax return. However, if your 2023 income was higher, you may end up owing back some of the premiums that the government gave to help pay your premiums. Please contact your accountant so they can guide you through this process.

We want to highlight the importance of accurate income estimates when filling out your health insurance application because it will affect your taxes if you qualify for advanced premium tax credits. Remember, the government is giving you free credits to use towards paying your health insurance premium but they provide more credits when you make a lower income.

For example, if you say you will make $20,000 in 2024 they might give you $500 in advanced premium tax credits per month. If I put that I will make $24,000 they might only give me $400 in credits per month.

We hope this post was helpful and provided some value, we know this topic is not too often talked about but it is very important to know. If you have any questions or need help with doing your health insurance marketplace applications correctly, our doors are always open.

If you haven’t filed already you can do so online with our partners at TurboTax:

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If you made less than $79,000 in adjusted gross income (AGI) you may be able to file your taxes for free using Direct File from the IRS.