With tax day less than two weeks away, more than 200 Vermonters are still waiting on paperwork from Vermont Health Connect that serves as proof of their health coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Kathryn Nicoli is one of those Vermonters. She works a lot.

“I work seven days a week, about 104 hours a week, nine to 12,” she said. “I worked back-to-back shifts every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and that’s a day rate; when I work 24-hour shifts it is $153.60 now. So I do that to try to make up for the $12-dollar-an-hours.”

She’s doing math often to make sure she’s making enough to cover her expenses, but this year when she did her taxes, the numbers didn’t add up.

For Nicoli, who said she basically lives check-to-check, the problem could add hundreds of dollars to her tax bill.

She said she signed up for health coverage on Vermont Health Connect last May, but for her, the plan didn’t cut it.

“With the insurance that I had, a copay on one of my medications was roughly $230 a month, and I said I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t pay $200 for insurance and pay $230 a month for one medication while I do.”

Nicoli used to be a Marine, so she went to the VA and found out that she qualified for need-based health care.

She said she called Vermont Health Connect on Sept. 15 to cancel her coverage, and they told her the coverage would stop at the end of the month.

“I was told when I exited the exchange Sept. 30: ‘Well you’ll probably continue to get bills. Just ignore them because it takes a while for the system to catch up,’ ” she recalls.

Well, she did get another bill, and Nicoli says she even called Vermont Health Connect and they confirmed that she didn’t need to pay and her coverage was terminated.

Fast forward to this February, when she got an important tax document in the mail from Vermont Health Connect, her 1095-A.

“And the reason why that form is so important is because on the form it shows the federal subsidies that you received to offset the cost of the insurance,” she said. “So on that form I received, I believe it was $228.40 a month in federal subsidies.”

Nicoli ended up earning more than she’d expected, so the government is now asking her to pay back that subsidy money.

She said she has no problem paying back the subsidy money she benefited from — she earned more than expected, so she had to pay back the money she ultimately wasn’t entitled to. But the amount she owed was a surprise.

“I looked at it and realized, ‘Oh, this isn’t right. It shows me being in the health exchange for the month of October,’ ” she said.

The feds are expecting her to pay them back for $228 of subsidy money that she said she never received.

She called Vermont Health Connect, and she said they told her it was their fault and they’d send a new form.

That was February, and she still doesn’t have a new copy. She said she kept calling and they kept telling her they’d send one right away.

And Nicoli’s not alone.

Lawrence Miller, the head of the state’s health care reform efforts, said there are 236 1095 forms that still need to be corrected and sent out. Miller said the state has already successfully sent out 1095 forms for more than 100,000 Vermonters, so the outstanding changes make up less than one half of one percent of the forms the state was responsible for sending.

He said the errors that made it onto the 1095 forms likely came before the state double-checked its numbers.

“We work through a year-end reconciliation process with the carriers,” he said. “It’s a process of making sure all the data is right in the VHC system, the premium processor, and the carriers, and clean up any errors or omissions at the end of the year.”

For Nicoli, those errors and omissions could be costly.

The extra $228, she said, is the difference between a manageable tax bill and outright hardship.

With the tax deadline looming, Nicoli has to choose between waiting on a new form at the risk of tax penalties or paying back the October subsidy on health care she didn’t receive.

Then this week, she got another call. She said Vermont Health Connect is now claiming that Nicoli was covered in October, and she does owe the money.

If she doesn’t want to pay up, Nicoli said the state put the onus on her to prove her case.

“So at this point they’re sending me a form to fill out that says I have to (say) why the phone conversations of Sept. 15 and Oct. 16 need to be pulled,” she said. “They’re going to pull those conversations to validate that what I told her today is, in fact, the truth.”

In other words, she said, “they’re putting the burden of proof on me.”

Until she proves her point, she said, the state is refusing to send her a new form.