It’s Not an Obamacare Tax: It’s an “Individual Shared Responsibility Payment”

Townhall.com ^ | March 9, 2014 | Michael Schaus

[Kaslin]

Here’s your Orwellian Phrase for the Week: Individual shared responsibility payment. Yeah… Go ahead and try to wrap your brain around that amalgamation of contradictory concepts. The phrase is not gleamed from some glossy DNC spin-office, or a Harvard professor’s latest psychobabble posing as an academic paper. Apparently the phrase is the IRS’s fancy (new) term for the Obamacare Mandate tax that individuals will have to pay if they fail to get health insurance this year.

As reported by Americans for Tax Reform:

If you (or any of your dependents) do not maintain coverage and do not qualify for an exemption, you will need to make an individual shared responsibility payment with your return.

So… What exactly is this individual shared responsibility payment? Is it a claim by the Internal Revenue Service to a dollar amount, or portion of an individual’s income, that must be paid upon failing to comply with various tax-related requirements?... Because that sounds an awful lot like a “tax”. (But, I guess you can only call it a tax if you are a government lawyer defending Obamacare in Federal Court.)

The full context of the IRS’s stab at newspeak is as follows:

If you (or any of your dependents) do not maintain coverage and do not qualify for an exemption, you will need to make an individual shared responsibility payment with your return. In general, the payment amount is either a percentage of your household income or a flat dollar amount, whichever is greater. You will owe 1/12th of the annual payment for each month you (or your dependents) do not have coverage and are not exempt. The annual payment amount for 2014 is the greater of:

1) One percent of your household income that is above the tax return filing threshold for your filing status, such as Married Filing Jointly or single, or

2) Your family’s flat dollar amount, which is $95 per adult and $47.50 per child, limited to a maximum of $285.

Well, at least one thing never changes: Taxes remain unnecessarily complicated. But I get the general idea: If you don’t obtain health insurance, you will be slapped with this tax individual shared responsibility payment. And within a few short years, that tax individual shared responsibility payment will increase to 2.5 percent of Adjusted Gross Income or $2,085 annually – whichever is greater.

Of course this opens up a world of possibilities for those IRS Public Relation gurus who write our tax forms (sarcasm font)… Gas taxes are actually “shared energy consumption payments”. Income taxes are really just “American resident prosperity payments”. Heck, even corporate taxes could be redefined as “involuntary shared commercial capital donations”.

Besides, I guess it would be bad PR for Democrats, if millions of uninsured Americans suddenly saw an Obamacare “tax” on their 1040ez.

[Thank You Rush]

This should be worth taking back to the USSC....NOW that it’s NOT a tax! I should think they would have something to say when terms get changed AFTER the government got the decision they wanted. But that would be in our dreams - not in the real world.

[headstamp 2]

Talked with a young guy of 29 the other day about ObamaCare. He said the only reason it was failing is because too many people weren’t participating in it.

Of course he’s covered at work. I told him he would feel very differently when the mandate finally hit his policy. He still didn’t get it.

[R0CK3T]

Hey - Lois Lerner is available for a new job assignment and she could be just the right person to lead this new effort?!! /sarc

[faithhopecharity]

“George Orwell” taught us that dictators and tyrants try to change the language to hide what they’re doing to us. For instance, “giving the sheep the shaft” becomes “providing the Champion Contributors a lubricant- free upper rectal massage”. (Result is the same but the sheep seem to enjoy it this way — they even ask for more like they did in 2012)

[sasquatch]

But, I guess you can only call it a tax if you are a government lawyer defending Obamacare in Federal Court.)

or the chief justice

[Mr Ramsbotham]

This should be worth taking back to the USSC....NOW that it’s NOT a tax!

And that would probably do the trick, if John Roberts weren't still boofing little boys.

[GOPJ]

"If you (or any of your dependents) do not maintain coverage and do not qualify for an exemption, you will need to make an individual shared responsibility payment with your return."

This Orwellian phrase is also a LIE to the rest of us who actually pay for insurance. It's suppose to tell us the 'dependent ones' who prop up democrats are 'sharing responsibility' rather than being slugs. This phrase is a lie on so many levels...

[Amagi]

Great news. It's not a tax, so now it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
Thank you so very much, Judge Johnny.

[catnipman]

To me, the thing that leaps out from this Orwellian notification is that there is no “or else” clause. There is no mention at all as to what happens if someone refuses to pay. No mention of penalties. No mention of civil or criminal lawsuits. No mention of garnishment of property. And that because the obamacare law explicitly prohibits any of those, and the authors of obamacare constructed this penalty as a fine, not a tax.

[Kaslin]

I bet I am correct when I say he voted for that arrogant pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave not only once, but twice.

[SusaninOhio]

If ‘children’ up to 26 CAN be in their parents’ plans, does that mean if they chose to not be, and to not purchase a policy, the parents can be forced to pay the FINE for them not being covered?

This is shaping up to be a worse mess than even I anticipated. God help the citizens of this great country.

[OpusatFR]

I’m a serf. That’s what every single person who pays taxes to support people who do not.

In Imperial Russia, the serfs worked to pay taxes.

I am a serf, lower than a peasant.

[RJS1950]

It can’t be both. The current USSC ruling is that it is a tax and so that one small part of the bill is constitutional as a tax. The tax ruling does not validate the rest of it as constitutional. If it is not a tax then the forced contribution is unconstitutional.

Shove it up their asses you nadless “representatives”.

[grania]

uuuhhhhh.....I'm not responsible for people who eat themselves to manatee-like appearance, have as their only exercise pushing a remote button and abuse drugs/alcohol/other things that destroy their bodies. People who don't self-heal as much and possible and think pharmaceuticals are a good idea instead should not get my help paying their bill. I'm supposed to subsidize the salary of those who give those nosey "medical" interviews to people dumb enough to answer those questions?

The more Obama's administration says, the further they sink.

[Rome2000]

Sounds effin communist to me

[Vaduz]

Obamacare “tax” on their 1040ez.
You can count on it Obamacare can’t make a dime no matter how many systems they rape.

[devolve]

- Now I’ll have to change my favorite ID…

- From Whitey Bulger to Blackie Folger- or maybe Barney Soetero.

[The Antiyuppie]

“I’m a serf. That’s what every single person who pays taxes to support people who do not.”

Sorry! We pretended to free only the BLACK slaves.

[Sgt_Schultze]

Not really. It’s a tax because justice Roberts specifically agreed the whole concept was Constitutional because the “contribution” was actually tax, exactly as the Solicitor General argued.