EXCESSIVE OUTRAGE ON RETIREE SUBSIDY ACCOUNTING. Post-ObamaCare, companies are taking charges against future earnings as required by federal law and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is incensed.

Megan McArdle explains:

Here's the thing: health care benefits are tax deductible. Deducting the cost of the benefits is standard practice. And subsidies usually aren't taxable, because there's no point, really. This wasn't a loophole. It was the natural result of the current tax code. And there's no evidence so far that the "loophole" was unintentional; legislators may have decided this was the optimal bribe to get companies to keep their seniors on the drug program rolls. It would hardly be the first time that tax subsidies were thrown in as a sweetener.
Now we've changed it, we have made retiree health benefits more costly for the companies. That means that some of them will probably drop their benefits. Fine, if you think that's good policy, but let's not pretend this is some righteous campaign against dastardly companies. We were paying them to take expensive seniors off our hands. Now we want to reduce the payments.

Waxman is offended tha the companies involved are refusing to hide his -- and Congress’s -- incompetence.