Cabela’s charges customers for Obamacare
It seems that as of January 1, 2013 Cabelas has started to charge its customers for Obamacare, or so it seems. A separate line item tax has been applied to Cabelas purchases for a Medical Excise Tax. It is true that the Medical Excise Tax is a part of the Obamacare system, though it does not apply to all items and it should not be getting charged to customers at Cabelas. The tax is only supposed to be applied to medical equipment, and expressly that which is not purchased for individual use.
Since Cabelas does not sell any commerical medical equipment, they should not be charging that tax on anything that they sell. It turns out that there was either a glitch in the point of sale software that Cabelas uses, or it was the error of a misinformed employee at Cabelas. Cabelas has since stated that any customer who was charged for the Medical Excise Tax can bring in their receipt or call their customer service for a refund.
This “glitch” hasn’t stopped the right-wingers from blasting copies of their receipts all over the Internet and facebook to try and rally up their friends against the Health Care Act we call Obamacare. I think many of them were rightfully appalled that non-related items they were purchasing seemed to be levied a tax by a reputable outfitter such as Cabelas. Double check your recent receipts, even if you havent shopped at Cabelas because there are bound to be other retailers mistakenly charging for the taxes.
Image courtesy of Facebook.com
