While we await the Supreme Court decision on the Health Care Act, the IRS is working on the format for information they will share with Health and Human Service (HHS).

That's right, information on your tax returns will be sent from the IRS to HHS.  Gone is the concept your tax information would be held confidential by the IRS.  I don't know what safeguards will be placed on the information once it is the hands of HHS.

You didn't know that was part of the deal?  Not surprising.  Congress was very good at concealing parts of the legislation that might have turned the public against the politicians voting for the legislation.

Items such as your name, filing status, number of exemptions, modified adjusted gross income, and municipal interest will be sent to HHS for use in determining compliance with provisions of the Health Care Act.

While I haven't read the entire bill, and neither did the Congressional politicians that voted for it, I suspect that penalties for disclosure of confidential information by the HHS didn't make it into the bill.  What I can't understand is why Congress didn't just let the IRS do the work.  The IRS would already have the information and be subject to privacy rules.  The IRS has been calculating credits for decades.  Just give the IRS the criteria and they could have sent back reports in a qualified/unqualified format.  No confidential information would leave the IRS.  But in typical government thinking, it is better to create a new, additional bureaucracy than to utilize the bureaucracies already in place.

But that's just my opinion . . .