January 10, 2015, 11:58 PM Last updated: Sunday, January 11, 2015, 12:03 AM

First the carrot, now the stick.

Insurance information needed for taxes

The Affordable Care Act rolled out last year with the promise of health coverage for those who hadnt been able to get it before. That was the good part. Now comes the penalty phase: Those who didnt have health coverage in 2014 will probably owe the Internal Revenue Service money this year.

As tax-filing season opens, Americans are beginning to realize that President Obamas signature health-reform law was as much about taxes as health insurance. Experts estimate that as many as 30 million Americans 10 percent of the population will be affected by the changes it made in the tax code this year.

How that shakes out how many will pay penalties or be exempted from them, how many will see their tax refunds increased or decreased by the filing day of April 15 remains to be seen. But as ignorance and confusion give way to surprise at the laws impact on consumers pocketbooks, the political repercussions could be significant.

Im afraid this is going to be the third strike, said Linda Schwimmer, vice president of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute. First was the discovery, in the fall of 2013, that those who liked their current insurance coverage wouldnt necessarily be able to keep it despite President Obamas promise to the contrary. Next was the debacle, during the first open-enrollment period, of HealthCare.govs computer problems. Now comes the collision of the health law and income taxes.

I think this is a real vulnerability for the Affordable Care Act and its proponents, said Schwimmer, whose nonpartisan group advocates for accountability and transparency in health care.

But most people dont know what it means yet for their households. While the majority of taxpayers will merely have to check off a box attesting that they had insurance the entire year, others will find it a whole lot more complicated.

Our research indicates that many consumers may be in for a surprise at tax time, said Kathy Pickering, executive director of H&R Blocks Tax Institute. The majority of taxpayers wont figure that out until the moment they sit down to file their taxes this tax season, she said.

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Tax time brings sobering surprise as health care act's penalties kick in