“now that it is officially a “tax,”...”
I keep seeing this and hearing people say it, but I can’t find anywhere that it is somehow a tax declaratively - including the majority SCOTUS opinion written by Roberts.
Roberts merely said that it can be looked at as a tax (essentially) because it is a penalty under the taxing authority and collected by the IRS, but it is not considered a tax under statute. This means that the court treated it as a tax in order to even hear the case, and to rule the way they did. If it was truly a tax in the traditional sense, then the case would have been denied and someone would have to wait to file until they were “injured” by the law (IOW only after they had to pay the tax, not before).
I think the opinion was written specifically to allow all of the pols to split hairs and have it both ways as is and whenever necessary.
That’s my 2 cents on it.
From Page 4 of the Opinion:
“(a) The Affordable Care Act describes the “[s]hared responsibilitypayment” as a “penalty,” not a “tax.” That label is fatal to the application of the Anti-Injunction Act. It does not, however, control whether an exaction is within Congress’s power to tax. In answering that constitutional question, this Court follows a functional approach,“[d]isregarding the designation of the exaction, and viewing its substance and application.” United States v. Constantine, 296 U. S. 287,
294. Pp. 33–35.
(b)
Such an analysis suggests that the shared responsibility payment may for constitutional purposes be considered a tax.”
If it walks like a duck...and talks like a duck...