Posted on 07/07/2012 11:48:40 AM PDT by sourcery
Defects in the Supremes’ holding that the Obamacare penalty is a “tax”
Under the Constitution’s original meaning, the Supreme Court’s holding that Obamacare’s penalty for not purchasing health insurance is a tax is defective in at least two respects.
(Excerpt) Read more at tenthamendmentcenter.com ...
Clearly.
The Constitution is very clear: taxes are to raise revenue not to punish "undesireable" behavior.
from the local level allowing "utility" monopolies to raise rates, to the seizure of property, manipulation of property values, to the federal level using the SCOTUS or EPA, etc as socialist political tools
nothing (including voting) will change this except violent revolution, may as well get used to it
Saying that SCOTUS is wrong is tilting at windmills. Just like Roe v Wade and others, the solution is to elect people who will repeal and write better laws.
The other side will just argue that the penalty is to raise revenue to provide health care to those that didn't buy insurance it.
This actually isn't completely bad. If those without insurance force those with insurance to subsidize their care (through emergency room visits, for example) then it makes sense to get them to pay up front.
The trouble, though, is that as soon as the 16th amendment was ratified, the connection between what people paid in taxes was divorced from the services the government provides. The government can now take as much as it wants from some and give it to others in cash, like transfer payments in social security, or services, like free health care services.
People think the 16th amendment is the "income tax" amendment. It should be called the "income redistribution" amendment.
Baloney....The feds have been using taxes to punish behavior since the New Deal. Try buying an automatic weapon without buying a $200 TAX STAMP from the BATF. That was put in ONLY to secure the names of people buying the weapons and punish them for doing so. Has nothing whatsoever to do with “raising revenue”. It’s a stupid argument for us to make.
Congress should order that John Roberts’ mental competency be evaluated due his epilepsy and medication. I think Kagan switched his meds! Did Kagan take any courses in parapsychology or hypnosis?
You are 100% correct. Unfortunately, only a complete revolution will solve this problem just like the one that founded this country...
Roberts was the only one to get the ruling correct!
All the other judges pushed aside analysis and simply went with their gut.
It was the right ruling on a stinky law.
What we really ought to do is push for a repeal of the 16th or at least modify it. So many problems besides the health care law would be solved.
Really? Noobie....
The Constitution enumerates only three indirect taxes: duty, impost and excise tax. The mandate penalty is not a duty or impost—it's not a tax on any object at all (unlike the tax on carriages that was the subject of HYLTON v. U S., which the Court decided was either a duty or an excise.) And it's not an excise tax—by definition, an excise tax can only be imposed on transactions or events that actually occur, not on ones that don't. To disprove that, cite any excise tax ever imposed on what didn't happen.
So if it's a tax, it can only be a direct tax. Per original intent, direct taxes were those imposed on states of being, and indirect taxes were imposed on objects, events or transactions. Roberts got that wrong, and misinterpreted both Springer and Hylton, both of which were about taxes levied either on events (excises) or objects (duties or imposts,) and not about taxes imposed on states of being.
Originally, income taxes were understood to be excise taxes that taxed transactions where income was earned. The Pollock decision reclassified income taxes on capital gains, rents, royalties, dividends and interest as direct taxes. The 16th Amendment exempted income tax on income generated by ownership of property from the requirement of apportionment among the States. That's one of the few things the Robert's opinion got right on the tax issue.
So what is our recourse when the SCOTUS gets something wrong?
From what I can tell there is no recourse. in the Obamacare case all we can hope is for Congress to get rid of it but the ruling will still be out there.
Read somewhere that Ben Franklin, I believe, said this Republic would survive so long as people trusted the Supreme Court. Now we’re at the end of that road.
See Tag Line!
Strategy to repeal ObamaCare:
1) House passes a bill to repeal ObamaCare; Senate rejects it.
2) House passes a bill to repeal the individual mandate. The Senate passes it, because it only takes 51 votes in the Senate since the individual mandate was passed under “budget reconciliation,” and therefore cannot be filibustered. Obama vetoes it—he has no real choice.
3) House passes a bill that declares that the individual mandate is not a tax, that denies the Federal Courts jurisdiction to hear challenges to the new law, and that declares that if the courts rule that it is still a tax as a matter of Constitutional law in spite of the new law, then the mandate penalty/tax cannot be enforced.
Now the President and his party are forced to make an impossible choice: They either must acknowledge it’s a tax in a way that is political poison, or they must pass a law that effectively nullifies the Roberts ruling.
Extremely interesting!
Patient Protection Affordable Care Act comprises myriad sections of law. The waivers exclude favored entities from the requirements of a few sections (or parts of sections). They do not guarantee categorical exclusion from the entire law. Secretary of Health and Human Services statutorily can waive this particular tax requirement if she judges that the politically connected applicant would experience a particular hardship, but insofar as I know, she has not issued any such waivers of this requirement. Remember, this tax section imposes a particularly regressive penalty on the working poor. It does not punish lack of health insurance; it punishes INCOME, particularly income generated from work that does not provide health insurance. It hits the working poor especially hard: the tax on a full-time, year-round minimum-wage income ($15,020/year) for a family (two married adults and two or more children OR a head-of-household and four or more children) is $2,085/year (in and after 2016). That tax applies in addition to other income taxes: regular income taxes, state income taxes, local income taxes, Federal Insurance contribution income taxes, Medicare income taxes, et cetera. Congress specifically designed this income tax is intended to penalize such families if they choose to work and thereby induce them to enroll in welfare programs.
The act does provide for an exclusion for taxation if health insurance is not affordable, but the monthly premium must exceed 8% of annual “modified adjusted gross income” for the household; effectively, the insurance premium for EACH individual in the household must cost more than 96% of pre-tax income for the entire household (including employee benefits).
Patient Protection Affordable Care Act comprises myriad sections of law. The waivers exclude favored entities from the requirements of a few sections (or parts of sections). They do not guarantee categorical exclusion from the entire law. Secretary of Health and Human Services statutorily can waive this particular tax requirement if she judges that the politically connected applicant would experience a particular hardship, but insofar as I know, she has not issued any such waivers of this requirement. Remember, this tax section imposes a particularly regressive penalty on the working poor. It does not punish lack of health insurance; it punishes INCOME, particularly income generated from work that does not provide health insurance. It hits the working poor especially hard: the tax on a full-time, year-round minimum-wage income ($15,020/year) for a family (two married adults and two or more children OR a head-of-household and four or more children) is $2,085/year (in and after 2016). That tax applies in addition to other income taxes: regular income taxes, state income taxes, local income taxes, Federal Insurance contribution income taxes, Medicare income taxes, et cetera. Congress specifically designed this income tax is intended to penalize such families if they choose to work and thereby induce them to enroll in welfare programs.
The act does provide for an exclusion for taxation if health insurance is not affordable, but the monthly premium must exceed 8% of annual income for the household; effectively, the insurance premium for EACH individual in the household must cost more than 96% of pre-tax income for the entire household (including employee benefits).
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