IRS to Play Starring Role in Health Care Overhaul

Dow Jones, IRS Would Play Starring Role In Health-Care Overhaul, by Martin Vaughan:

The IRS would emerge bigger and with even wider reach under the health care bills pending in Congress.

The IRS would be in charge of ensuring individuals purchase health insurance, under leading House and Senate plans. It would collect penalties from large companies that don't offer insurance to their employees. And it would assist state officials in administering tax credit subsidies for the purchase of health insurance.

The bill headed for approval by the Senate Finance Committee by next week includes no fewer than 17 provisions that would add new duties for the IRS, according to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. "I am very concerned about...the unprecedented role of the [IRS] in implementing a social program that has nothing to do with the IRS's primary mission of collecting taxes," Grassley wrote last week in a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.