Better to go through marketplace or buy directly from provider? My tax guy said better direct

Hello,
I have been on Medical for part of the year since losing my job but it is ending shortly and I need to continue my health care (Kaiser).

With my new job I believe I will be making about 50k this year which I think will not qualify me for Covered California marketplace help.

However if I go on the Covered Ca site, with my income/earnings it says I would qualify for 50% savings.

Full health care plan would be about $400/mo but through Covered Ca, it says I only need to pay $200 and is subsidized $200.

However I did this last year – entering all information on CoveredCa correctly and it qualified me for the same.

But at the end of the year, my tax guy said that I made too much and I now needed to re-imburse the govt and pay back the amount that I was subsidized.

He said I would have qualified for tax write off deductions if I had paid it directly to Kaiser. I went to Covered Ca for the subsidy offered but that was a bit frustrating to find that I had to pay it all back.

So now I'm in the same position – Covered Ca is offering me a plan at $400/mo but subsidizing it at $200 – so a total of $200. But I stated my income was going to be around 50k/year (fluctuates as I work in hospitality) which from all search results says for a single person if you make more than 47k/year than you would not qualify. I don't know why it is giving me the lower rates.

I'd like to take advantage of the lower subsidized rates of course but it seems the same thing will happen and I'll just need to pay it all back with my taxes.

I assume the tax write off would be very beneficial if I paid directly. He said I could not get tax write off last year since I claimed subsidy and took the open market's discounted rate which supposedly meant I couldn't write it off – even though I ended up paying all of the subsidy back on my taxes anyways.

submitted by /u/mwrightm
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