It’s not based on income.
What is "it's"? The penalty or the individual mandate?
“’It’s not based on income.’
‘What is “it’s”? The penalty or the individual mandate”
“It” is what it was in your post: the penalty/tax. The mandate, by the way, is now a phantom. It doesn’t actually exist, or to say the same thing has no legal force. Only the tax exists; the mandate is an explicit implication that in the eyes of SCOTUS does not rise to coercion because the so-called tax backing it up is justified.