Article Highlights
- Will the IRS be able to collect the #Obamacare tax?
- To get young people to buy health insurance when it’s more expensive than it already is, there must be real consequences.
- Though the #ACA imposes a tax, the law explicitly neuters the IRS’s ability to collect it.
Generally speaking, if you owe money to the IRS, they will get it from you-with the possible exception of the ObamaCare tax.
Now that the Supreme Court has decided that ObamaCare's mandate to buy health insurance is a tax, will the IRS be able to collect it?
Generally speaking, if you owe money to the IRS, they will get it from you-with the possible exception of the ObamaCare tax. Though ObamaCare's individual mandate imposes a tax on people who do not purchase government-approved health insurance, the law explicitly neuters the IRS's ability to collect the tax.
Bizarre? Yes. And it matters. If policymakers expect uninsured young people to buy health insurance when it is even more expensive than it is today, the threat of serious consequences for not doing so must be real. Yes, the threat that the IRS might come after you if you do not do what you are told looks real at first glance. But Democratic politicians, fearing public backlash for making the mandate too intrusive, pulled its teeth.
Read the full article at the American.
Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Healthcare and Retirement Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, where Michael R. Strain is a research fellow.
