@National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius
Sorry, but Roberts NEVER claims to say its a tax on income, that would be stupid. Please re-read the comment, income is a circumstance, not the rational mentioned by Roberts. Besides, there is NO declaration of what type of tax this is, and is most likely due to the reasons for getting taxed, the rationale in other words, that it is a direct tax. Mark Levin, a Constitutional lawyer, already commented on this. Please see his Thursday show from last week, its free. Regrettably, I do not agree with you.
That's not correct.
You are confusing the way the penalty for non-compliance is measured with the incidence of the penalty.
The mandate is not TRIGGERED by the receipt by a taxpayer of an item of income or gain. If it were, it would indeed be an income tax.
The mandate by its own terms applies to people as a class, subject to certain class exemptions.
Where the income test comes in is in the measurement of the penalty.
In a way, it is reminiscent of the way fines for breaking traffic laws are imposed in certain Scandinavian countries.
There, if you are caught for speeding, the amount of the fine varies depending on your income. Higher income individuals who break the speeding laws pay a higher fine than lower income laws.
Technically, that does not change the traffic law into an income tax.
It's the same situation with the ObamaCare mandate.
“The whole point of the shared responsibility payment is that it is triggered by specific circumstances—earning a certain amount of income but not obtaining health insurance”
The “certain amount of income” stipulation is a sop to progressivism, because all taxes must have the appearance of soaking the rich even if they will mainly fall on middle and lower classes as in this case. Also, they already have this massive bureaucracy set up to track people’s income, called IRS, and it’s a convenient way to get at evil antisocial freeloaders. So in a small way income is involved in deciding whether or not you get taxed, but not for any but the poor, but not enough to be legal.
Since those who reach a “certain amount of income” who do have insurance coverage won’t be taxed, clearly not having coverage is what’s being taxed. That’s the deciding factor, once you exclude those below a certain level. Aside from them the income part is merely the means of getting at those without coverage. And since taxing people without coverage is a head tax, it is not within the government’s power to do so.