Obamacare's tax audits are few and far between

Tax season is a pain in the neck for millions of people, but many Americans this year may be getting a pass from unpleasant questions—or even an audit—from the Internal Revenue Service about their compliance with Obamacare. A leading tax audit defense company said its clients so far are seeing a surprisingly low rate of queries tied to the Affordable Care Act this year—the first in which Americans were asked to disclose their health insurance status. TaxAudit.com also said the IRS has been asking the company's clients about just one of the several types of ACA-related issues that could trip filers up. Only people who received tax credits to buy Obamacare plans, but did not file one or two forms in conjunction with those subsidies are receiving IRS queries, the company said. The agency thus appears to be forgoing, at least for now, recovering potential penalties or other payments from those TaxAudit.com customers for the other issues.

So far, none of the company's customers are being challenged about their claims to have had health insurance last year, about their exemption from Obamacare's mandate to have such insurance, or about the amount of money they received to help pay for their coverage. "It's dialing for dollars," TaxAudit.com's vice president of customer advocacy, Dave Du Val, said of the grace period that most people seem be getting from the IRS about Obamacare compliance. "You can't lose," said Du Val, whose company assists clients with questions and audits from the IRS. The company's services are available as part of Intuit's TurboTax tax preparation software. Read MoreBig changes proposed for Medicare surgery payments Du Val said he expects the agency has, to a certain extent, thrown up its hands, and is not aggressively enforcing compliance with Obamacare, at least for this year. "I don't think they have the manpower now, I don't think they believe they have the manpower either," Du Val said. Asked if he believed his client's customers were the only ones subject to an effective grace period this year from the IRS on most ACA-compliance issues, Du Val said, "No, not at all." An IRS spokesman had no immediate comment when CNBC asked about TaxAudit.com's claims, but noted it takes time for the agency to process data from a filing season that includes about 150 million returns. Last year was the first in which most Americans were required by the ACA to have some form of health coverage or be subject to a tax penalty equal to the higher of $95, or 1 percent of adjusted gross household income. The collection of penalties and disclosure of insurance status only began earlier this year with the 2014 tax filing season. Most people were able to claim, truthfully, that they had insurance, and weren't required to file anything else. But a fraction of people claimed an exemption for Obamacare's individual mandate, and were required to state the basis for that exemption, which can include having very low income, having filed for bankruptcy, being the victim of domestic violence or having a close family member die. "The exemptions are so many, and so varied," Du Val said.