The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has published a number that will cap the new penalty on the uninsured at $2,448 per person for 2014, or up to $12,240 per family.
The IRS set the maximum "individual shared responsibility payment" maximum by reporting that the average monthly premium for individual bronze-level coverage is $204 per month. The maximum monthly national average bronze plan premium — for a "shared responsibility family with five or more members" — is $1,020, the IRS says in Revenue Procedure 2014-46.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) now requires many people to have "minimum essential coverage" (MEC), or else pay a penalty for each month in which they lack MEC.
For 2014, PPACA sets the penalty for an individual at $95 or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater. For taxpayers with high incomes, PPACA caps the penalty at the average cost of bronze-level coverage. The cap means that an affected individual taxpayer will owe the 1 percent 2014 uninsured penalty on income up to $244,800 per year. A family could owe the penalty on income up to $1,224,000.