The Trump Tax Cuts and the Obamacare Mandate 'Repeal'

American Thinker.com ^ | January 10, 2018 | Jon N. Hall

[Kaslin]

The new tax bill is now law; it's on the books; it's an addition to the U.S. Code. But unfortunately, the new law doesn't have a very catchy title. Its original title was the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017," which is most excellent. However, due to punctilios in the Senate, the name had to be changed, and in the rush to get the thing passed, congressmen settled on "An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018." That's not so catchy. I don't know if it can be retitled, but because titles matter, I'd wager that the new law will simply be called the "Trump Tax Cuts."

Conservatives should be relieved that Republicans in Congress finally passed a big piece of legislation. We were beginning to think they were incapable of coming together.

One of the pleasant surprises in the new law is the so-called "repeal" of Obamacare's individual mandate. But inasmuch as Obamacare is still "on the books," just how did Republicans accomplish this repeal?

Okay, let's look at the law. One place to find the text of the Trump Tax Cuts is at congress.gov. The copy there has hyperlinks, and in the section on the mandate, there is a single link, on "Section 5000A(c)." But it doesn't seem to have page numbers to navigate with, unlike the copy at the Government Publishing Office. On page 101 of the PDF at the GPO, we come to PART VIII, which deals with the mandate, and it spans two pages. Because I'm a nice guy, I've spliced together two screen grabs from the GPO copy for your convenience:

[Windflier]

Does the Trump Tax Cut bill actually repeal the individual mandate, or does it merely reduce the penalty for non-compliance to $0?

[Alberta's Child]

It reduces the penalty to $0.

That was the positive aspect of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that formally recognized the individual mandate as a "tax." Since it was a tax, it could be addressed through a reconciliation measure that didn't require 60 votes in the U.S. Senate.

[apillar]

Does the Trump Tax Cut bill actually repeal the individual mandate, or does it merely reduce the penalty for non-compliance to $0?

Is there really a difference? Either way it would take another act of congress to reinstate. And the only people that are going to follow a "mandate" with no penalty for noncompliance are Dudley Do-Right and blithering idiots...