WyBlog

The IRS has sufficient authority to enforce the individual mandate in Obamacare

I'm kind of a tax lawyer groupie. I know just enough to be boring at cocktail parties, and I find the intricacies of tax law fascinating, but I am by no means an "expert". So I read with interest the findings of guys who are actual tax lawyers deciphering the inner workings of Obamacare's individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Their conclusion? The IRS has sufficient administrative authority to enforce the mandate.

You gotta read the whole thing, it's arcane and it's long, but their conclusion is clear — if you don't buy health insurance or pay the fine the IRS will own your ass.

These guys aren't wack-job liberal shills either. They're real serious tax scholars. There's no agenda here, just the letter of the law.

Setting aside the Constitutionality of the mandate for a moment the validity of its enforcement by the IRS opens up some very interesting questions. For starters, what else can Congress mandate that we must do under penalty of having the IRS make our lives even more miserable?

How about forcing every American to buy a car from Government Motors?

If it's [enforceable] to impose an insurance mandate, i.e. "you must purchase a product from this industry," why would it be [unenforceable] to refine that to "you must purchase our product from this industry"? In fact, assuming that the feds gave you a choice between not buying a car at all and having to buy GM if you did choose to buy one, the GM hypothetical would operate more like auto-insurance laws — which are, of course, fully [enforceable] — than the true mandate that's found in ObamaCare.

Lovely.

And when it comes to student loans they're already forcing us to patronize one favored lender. (Unless you live in North Dakota.) And in typical government monopoly fashion student borrowers will pay more and get less. The "vig" on their loans goes toward funding Obamacare so it's all good according to the Obamabots.

So, what else might the Obamunists force us to buy?

The social engineers Barry appointed to the FCC recently decided all Americans have a "right" to universal broadband internet service. Is it a stretch to imagine them designating an Official Broadband Carrier and mandating that we purchase service from it if we want to use the internet? Such a scheme sure would make life easier for the copyright police, eh?

There's been talk in Congress of bailing out or nationalizing the newspaper business. Pinch Sulzberger's Peoples Commissariat for the Ministry of Truth is already a wholly owned subsidiary of the Obama Administration. How long will it be until we're all forced to subscribe to The New York Pravda or The Washington Izvestia? That would be one way to curb the influence of Fox News!

Once upon a time the citizens of these United States were free to go about their business unfettered by the paternalistic embrace of government. We have now reached the time where the Constitution, like so many other old books and stories, is just another fairy tale we wistfully read with our grandchildren.

Posted at 21:23 by Chris Wysocki   [/obamacare]   | Trackback | Perm Link |
Technorati Tags: Obamacare Individual+Mandate IRS tax+law