Opinion ID: 223249
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Designation of Numerous Other Provisions in the Act as Taxes

Text: We add the truism that Congress knows full well how to enact a tax when it chooses to do so. And the Act contains several provisions that are unmistakably taxes. The point is amply made by simply looking at four different provisions: (1) an Excise Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers, 26 U.S.C. § 4191(a) (There is hereby imposed on the sale of any taxable medical device by the manufacturer, producer, or importer a tax equal to 2.3 percent of the price for which so sold. (emphasis added)); (2) an Excise Tax on High Cost Employer-Sponsored Health Coverage, id. § 4980I(a)(1)-(2) (if an employee receives excess benefit, as defined in the statute, from employer-sponsored health coverage, there is hereby imposed a tax equal to 40 percent of the excess benefit (emphasis added)); (3) an Additional Hospital Insurance Tax for High-Income Taxpayers, amending id. § 3101(b) (as part of Federal Insurance Contributions Act, providing that there is hereby imposed on the income of every individual a tax equal to 1.45 percent of the wages . . . received by him with respect to employment (emphasis added)); [130] and (4) an Excise Tax on Indoor Tanning Services, id. § 5000B(a) (There is hereby imposed on any indoor tanning service a tax equal to 10 percent of the amount paid for such service . . . whether paid by insurance or otherwise (emphasis added)). It is an unremarkable matter of statutory construction that we presume Congress did not indiscriminately use the term tax in some provisions but not in others. See Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S. 167, 173, 121 S.Ct. 2120, 2125, 150 L.Ed.2d 251 (2001) (It is well settled that where Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally and purposely in the disparate inclusion or exclusion. (quotation marks and alteration omitted)). We have little difficulty concluding that Congress intended § 5000A to operate as a penalty. The very nature of congressional findings about the individual mandate further amplifies that Congress designed and intended to design a penalty for the failure to comply and not a tax. The source of the power, asserted by Congress, to create the mandate is directly pegged to the Commerce Clause. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. § 18091(a)(1) (The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section. . . is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce.. . .); id . § 18091(a)(2)(B) (Health insurance and health care services are a significant part of the national economy.. . . Private health insurance spending. . . pays for medical supplies, drugs, and equipment that are shipped in interstate commerce. Since most health insurance is sold by national or regional health insurance companies, health insurance is sold in interstate commerce and claims payments flow through interstate commerce.). Indeed, the findings make clear that the goal of the individual mandate is not to raise revenue for the public fisc, but rather to, among other things, reduce the number of the uninsured and to create what Congress perceived to be effective health insurance markets that make health insurance more widely available. Id. § 18091(a)(2)(C)-(I); see also id. § 18091(a)(2)(J) (The requirement is essential to creating effective health insurance markets that do not require underwriting and eliminate its associated administrative costs.). The argument that Congress need not employ the label of tax or expressly invoke the Taxing and Spending Clause in order to enact a valid tax is surely true, insofar as it goes. See Woods v. Cloyd W. Miller Co., 333 U.S. 138, 144, 68 S.Ct. 421, 424, 92 L.Ed. 596 (1948) ([T]he constitutionality of action taken by Congress does not depend on recitals of the power which it undertakes to exercise.). The problem with the claim, however, is not that Congress simply failed to use the term tax, or declined to invoke the Taxing and Spending Clause when explaining the constitutional basis for enacting the individual mandate. Rather, Congress repeatedly told us that the individual mandate is a penalty and expressly invoked its Commerce Clause power as the foundation for the mandate. The two are not the same thing. Ultimately, we are hard pressed to construe the statute in a manner that would require us to ignore the plain text of the statute, the words repeatedly employed by Congress, well-settled principles of statutory construction, and well-settled law emphasizing the substantive distinction between a tax and a penalty.