1. No individual mandate penalty
Most of the tax code changes stemming from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 took effect in 2018. One exception is the change to the shared responsibility payment, which takes effect this year.
The shared responsibility payment — commonly referred to as the individual mandate penalty — has applied to folks required to have health insurance under the Affordable Care Act but who didn’t get coverage and didn’t qualify for an exemption. If you owed the penalty, it was due when you pay your taxes.
Starting this year, however, there is no penalty. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act zeroed it out effective in 2019. So, folks who don’t have health insurance this year will not owe the penalty when they file their taxes in 2020.
