Obama Administration Didn't Know When Obamacare's Mandate Penalty Deadline Was Until a Tax Prep Firm Told Them
...In general, Americans have until the end of March to enroll in a 2014 Obamacare plan, but to avoid a tax penalty, they’ll have to sign up by mid-February. This quirk, unearthed by industry observers, appears to have gone previously unnoticed by the administration.

“The IRS didn’t know that,” said Jackson Hewitt Vice President Brian Haile, who recently brought the issue to the administration’s attention.

The AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar actually first reported this story about a week ago. His story makes it pretty clear that the administration was surprised to learn about the earlier date, and was only made aware of it when an outside tax prep firm informed them.

So it took a private tax firm to realize—after three years of administration work on the law's implementation—what the applicable tax law really is....