Posted on 07/06/2012 9:23:00 AM PDT by dps.inspect
Ok, so the road we are traveling is being paid for by penalty charges to all of us for living and using the roadway... Big Government argues, " No its a tax, not a penalty". So why does it feel like a penalty? You smoke so you pay a big penalty every time you buy tobacco... they say they want to change your behavior, so they are going to penalize you, and of course they will put your penalty payment to good use, pay for medical expenses for the damages that your behavior begets, but also, to pay Big Law, big bucks for getting such a handsome tax(penalty) benefits for Big Government.
Now we have Big Obamacare... to fund it, Big Bucks will be required, but to get the Big Bucks, the people must be penalized if they refuse? Q... what enumerated powers does the fed gov have to penalize its citizens for not joining in the Obamacare fiasco? No, Really! If its a tax, its not an income tax, if its a penalty, where is that word given definition in the constitution... seems to me someone much smarter than me could take this argument to lance the supreme court and demoncrats with... will Romney do it?
hate to burst your bubble, but you will pay the tax when filing you 1040.... that makes it an income tax... and if you read the 16th amendment, there are no restrictions on the governments ability to tax your income....
Frankly, at this point the issue of it being a tax or penalty is becoming a red herring for the political class to divert everyone from the real problem: the whole damn law and the dismantling of what was once the greatest healthcare system in the history of the world.
Good questions, dps, but the answer is one you won’t want to hear.
Let’s assume you apply for, interview for, and land a job at a company that will pay you a $250,000 annual salary, fully-reimbursed healthcare, and a full pension when you retire. Your ONLY task is to say “yes” or “no” to managers. You can spend your days picking at your fingernails in a swanky office, browse porn, eat at swanky diners on the company dime, and leave for the day whenever you please.
If an auditor came in and said, “DPS, we need to make some changes or your job will be at risk.” You would do everything in your power, even staying for full 8 hour days just to ensure you kept that job, right? You would do whatever those auditors asked, because you want to keep that cushy job, right?
The scenario I explained is government. Every one of our “Representatives” exists solely to be re-elected. They don’t want to make decisions that might make them look bad, because that means they might get voted out and lose all of the grandiosity that D.C. has to offer. They don’t want to make hard decisions, because that means they might get paid less, lose their benefits, lose their taxpayer-funded lunches and 5-course-meal meet-and-greets, or, at worst, lose their jobs.
The Founders never intended for government to be a high-paying, lifetime occupation. They envisioned citizens leaving their homes, their families, their jobs to serve the public for a short time as a representative in the world’s greatest deliberative body only to return a few years later to rejoin their families and their jobs. Public servants should be exactly that: servants to the public at large. It should be a labor of love, not one of excess. It has become a joke, really. To work for the government means short days, long holidays, and lifetime pensions after 20 years of work. That’s NOT what our Founders wished for our Federal government, but that’s what it’s become.
Barack Hussein Obama, the Marxist faggot occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. has assured this nation’s demise through continual propagation that a job in the public sector is long, high-paying, low-effort, and virtually permanent.
My thinking is a little more nuanced than that... it has to do with calling a tax a penalty... they are mutually exclusive terms. If you don’t stand up for language then we are truly subservient to the whims of gov making things up as they go. A penalty is something that is levied when you break the law, a tax is not. The administration wants to call it a penalty, the court wants to call it a tax... we have an impasse between two equal branches of government, which should render the law meaningless unless there is unanimity of language. This could be a lawsuit in and of itself, for the clarification of language... at least for a restraining order.
yes, but the whole damn law stands unless we, the little people think outside the box, more asymmetrical... see my other comment...
The intent of this post is to draw attention to the muddling of the meanings of tax and penalty by this administration... my point is that the two terms are mutually exclusive. We either pay a penalty for breaking the law or we pay taxes to the government coffers. A tax penalty refers to not paying taxes on time and you then incur a penalty on top of the taxes you owe for being late. Taxes are not penalties and penalties are not taxes... its time to take this argument and nail it to the wall of this white house.
If you truly want to know if this thing is a tax or a penalty, read the dissent in the SC case. From a practical standpoint, however, you apparently can make any damn fool claim you want and if you can get a majority of the court to agree with it, then that’s way its going to be.
One issue the dissenting justices raise is the issue that if it is a tax, does it violate the Article 1, Section 2 requirement that direct taxes be apportioned among the states by population.
Seriously lets consider this statement. How is 'owing ObamaScam penalty tax' an income? Does one file it as a 1099 form? Interest or Dividend income? Schedule C? No way, how ridiculous.
What if they applied this to Life or Disability Insurance and forced everyone to have a policy? Then anyone who chose not to have a policy would be fined and taxed. The Govt forces you to buy something and then taxes you if you decline, treating it as income you didn't payout to the insurance company. The Govt can then force you to buy anything they demand with an attached 'tax penalty' if declined. Welcome to tyrranical communism fellow serfs.
Let me be clear... I do not buy into or support this travesty in any way shape or form.
I am merely trying to point out the governments justification of this, and what they are ruling it as and what they are going to do.
It will go something like this:
Line 4,625: enter amount paid for health insurance.
Line 4,626: if zero is entered, go to line 6,947
Line 6,947: deduct 3,860.00 from refund shown on line 6,946
Line 6,948: if refund is less than 3,860.00 enclose check for the difference.
this is how it will be done. call it what you want, but if it is on my income tax form, then it is an income tax.
But you just said...
You smoke so you pay a big penalty every time you buy tobacco...
Isn't that "penalty" for smoking a tax in the form of a sumptuary tax?
Any "time related" penalty would fall upon the vendor, or merchant, for not sending in the taxes collected at the point of sale, not on the person purchasing the cigarettes as the tax is paid at the time of purchase.
“Tax” never appeared in the law. The rats were petrified of instituting another tax. Roberts never referred to it as one of the allowed taxes, direct, imposts, excises, or income, so how can you?
You and John Roberts can call a cat a dog all day long and that does not make it so.
If my health insurance does not meet the standards of our Marxist oppressors, I will be unconstitutionally fined and not taxed.
Use of irony to illustrate a point... admittedly, translating from thought to sentence construction is probably a little lacking...
How about what was said during the floor debates?
Would that indicate to you what was intended even though it "never appeared in the law"?
http://congressionalrecord.us/2009/Senate/s13830.html
You really have to go backwards and forwards a couple of pages to get the whole argument.
Page 13830...
Hmmmmm...provisions...
A VERY different thing.
In order to understand how he got to call it a tax, I provide the following information:
Sworn testimony is admissible in a court of law.
The supreme court is a court of law.
The idiot that represented fubo at the supreme court made 3 arguments about the penalty.
The first two were robustly slapped down.
On the third he said, rather sheepisly, almost under his breath, that is was indeed a tax.
My question is, if fubo’s lawyer said it was a tax, and then roberts took what he said, and said it was a tax, why are the pubs not taking this damn football and running with it?
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