Posted on 07/25/2014 6:54:45 PM PDT by Kid Shelleen
On Thursday the IRS released a slew of draft 2014 tax forms. The new draft Form 1040 shows a new surtax line has been created for the payment of the individual mandate surtax see line 61 of the 1040:
President Obama has repeatedly denied that the surtax is in fact actually a tax. The most prominent example was a heated exchange on ABCs This Week in Sept. 2009, when George Stephanopoulos confronted Obama with a dictionary:
(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...
check out the 1095 forms required in 2016
I changed with holding on my check, NO REFUND breaking even!!!!
Government NO LONGER using my money all year I am happy NO
OBAMMIECARE!!!!!!!!
At the end of the form it will show total tax owed. The O care part will not be differentiated. It will make for some strange accounting practices to backtrack and figure out which part they can’t penalize. Because I bet there won’t be aline at the end of the form which states “This part can’t be penalized”.
So, I see the SCOTUS going 4-4 that the law says exactly what it says. That leaves it up to Roberts, again. He already said the fines are taxes. By similar argument, the subsidies are tax *credits*, meaning they are taxes in reverse.
So, if he rules in favor of Halbig, the entire structure of Obamacare is unconstitutional on the basis of unequal federal tax treatment based on state of residence. That would violate the 14th Amendment.
But, Roberts clearly does not want to declare the law unconstitutional. So, what tortuous reasoning could he use to say that the law doesn’t say what it says? He did it once, he conceivably could do it again.
Roberts’ first line of reasoning (re the mandates being a tax) have opened up the entire can of worms we’re seeing now via Halbig, etc.
With his first ruling, Roberts opened up the Pandora’s Box of equal federal tax treatment. Some post-analyses of Robert’s decision said Robert’s ruling was going to mean big trouble for the law down the road and they were right. It’s taken years to see that come to fruition, but it’s finally here.
What the feds are doing now by applying the tax credits equally to residents of all states WOULD pass constitutional muster. Big problem is that is contrary to ACA wording, no two ways about it.
These tax credit challenge cases may not even be taken up by SCOTUS, depending on what the en banc DC Circuit decides.
If the full DC Circuit upholds the previous three judge panel decision, then I don’t think SCOTUS would even take the case. They won’t want to get into the realm of rewriting law and will just tell Congress to fix it, but for now the law must be enforced as written.
I wonder how many people have not/will not sign up for ObamaCare. I don’t see any reporting of this. Perhaps no one knows.
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