Now that President Obama’s health-insurance overhaul has become law, we can brace ourselves for the new taxes. What new taxes? Aren’t they only on the “rich” and on large companies?
It’s true that the Obama plan includes new taxes on upper-income people. For example, the Medicare tax will now be applied to investment income. People making more than $200,000, will now have to pay a 3.8 percent tax on investment income over that limit. For people earning salaries of more than $200,000, their payroll tax will rise from 1.45 to 2.35 percent on the amount over that limit. (The so-called employer’s share will remain the same.)
All told, the new Medicare taxes are projected to take in $184 billion by 2019, although that assumes the tax targets are stationary and unable to take evasive action. That is highly doubtful.
Other new taxes include the levy on high-end employer-purchased health insurance. Since this tax was offensive to labor unions, which negotiates so-called Cadillac plans for their members, it was put off until 2018 (when a two-term Obama would be out of office), so there’s plenty of time to modify it. There are also assorted large fees on drug and medical-device companies. “Fees” charged by government is a euphemism for “taxes.”
One might expect the corporate targets of such “fees” to object, but there’s been no objection. The companies supported ObamaCare in principle if not in every particular. Why? One reason is that along with the new charges comes the mandate compelling al U.S. residents to buy insurance (or have it bought for them). Big taxpayer subsidies are in the offing. Compulsory insurance therefore is money in the companies’ pockets; the new “fees” will be worked into the prices charged their captive clientele. Why do you think those companies’ stock prices are rising?
Moreover, big companies can always grapple with new taxes and regulations more easily than smaller companies can. So taxes and regulations have a way of concentrating industries by diminishing competition. ObamaCare is a classic government-backed cartel.
At any rate, those are not the taxes I am not referring to when I say we should brace ourselves. The taxes I mean are the implicit taxes that ObamaCare will impose on most productive people. What’s an implicit tax?
Read the whole thing here: Brace Yourself for ObamaCare Taxes
