Government analysts have found strange health insurance-related numbers in some taxpayers’ tax returns.
As of Feb. 25, 194 filers had claimed a total of $7.9 billion in advance premium tax credits (APTCs), according to a footnote in a report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).
Those filers claimed an average of about $40 million in APTCs each for the 2015 coverage year, according to the TIGTA data.
The TIGTA analysts excluded those filers from their analysis of the APTC program.
The other 1.4 million filers who put information about Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) premium tax credits in their returns reported receiving an average of only about $3,200 in APTC subsidy support each for the 2015 coverage year, for a total of about $4.2 billion in APTC support.
TIGTA, an arm of the U.S. Treasury Department that monitors the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), completed the report March 31. The watchdog agency released the report to the public today.
TIGTA analysts gave no indication of whether the strange numbers could be the result of taxpayer filing errors, IRS system errors, a low-profile protest, or some other filing problem.
The TIGTA report gives readers an overview of what the IRS has been doing during the 2016 tax filing season. Some early data from the report surfaced last week at a House hearing.
See also: More than 5% of early tax filers owed PPACA penalties
PPACA requires many individuals to have a minimum level of health coverage, or minimum essential coverage (MEC), or else pay a penalty.