To hear Republicans tell it, the individual mandate to buy health
insurance that the Supreme Court has now declared to be a tax is the
“largest tax in America’s history.”
Yet even when considered as a revenue-raising tax, the mandate at the center of President Obama's signature legislation is not even the largest tax increase in the 2010 healthcare law, much less in the history of the republic.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the penalty, or tax, for not buying health insurance will bring in just about $4 billion a year and a total of $17 billion by the end of the decade.
Taken either as a whole or as a percentage of the overall economy, that pales in comparison to many tax increases in recent decades.
And according to findings by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, there are nine different revenue increases that are larger within the healthcare law itself. They include payroll and investment tax increases on high-income Americans that will bring in $317 billion over 10 years, and taxes on health insurance providers and high-cost “Cadillac” healthcare plans that will each bring in more than $100 billion. Republicans have identified a total of 21 tax hikes in the law, which also include an excise tax on medical devices and a 10 percent levy on tanning services.
The GOP has long decried the healthcare law as the “largest tax increase in U.S. history” because of its more than $500 billion in revenue-raising measures, but in the days after the landmark Supreme Court ruling, they have suggested that the mandate - with its penalty newly defined as legally a tax - is the mother of all tax hikes.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/236611-health-law-mandate-isnt-largest-tax-despite-gop-claims
Yet even when considered as a revenue-raising tax, the mandate at the center of President Obama's signature legislation is not even the largest tax increase in the 2010 healthcare law, much less in the history of the republic.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the penalty, or tax, for not buying health insurance will bring in just about $4 billion a year and a total of $17 billion by the end of the decade.
Taken either as a whole or as a percentage of the overall economy, that pales in comparison to many tax increases in recent decades.
And according to findings by Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, there are nine different revenue increases that are larger within the healthcare law itself. They include payroll and investment tax increases on high-income Americans that will bring in $317 billion over 10 years, and taxes on health insurance providers and high-cost “Cadillac” healthcare plans that will each bring in more than $100 billion. Republicans have identified a total of 21 tax hikes in the law, which also include an excise tax on medical devices and a 10 percent levy on tanning services.
The GOP has long decried the healthcare law as the “largest tax increase in U.S. history” because of its more than $500 billion in revenue-raising measures, but in the days after the landmark Supreme Court ruling, they have suggested that the mandate - with its penalty newly defined as legally a tax - is the mother of all tax hikes.
Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/house/236611-health-law-mandate-isnt-largest-tax-despite-gop-claims
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