Suzanimal
07-03-2018, 03:04 PM
By Christopher Jacobs
JULY 3, 2018
Just when you think the move for government control of health care couldn’t get any worse, somehow it manages to. Last Wednesday, the District of Columbia City Council approved a requirement for all DC residents to purchase health insurance. The mandate would take effect in January, right when the federal mandate penalty drops to $0, as per last year’s tax law.
The D.C. mandate contains three elements that make it just as bad as, if not worse than, the federal mandate it is intended to replace.
A (Deliberately?) Opaque Process
Suffice it to say that the district’s individual mandate did not attract much attention. Unlike last week’s initiative vote on raising wages for tipped workers, or the battle over “right-to-die” legislation in the nation’s capital, restoring the individual mandate has slipped below the news radar screen. Some online searching Thursday found no references to the D.C. Council’s mandate vote in the Washington Post, or (but for a brief blurb in Politico) other online news articles discussing recent developments.
A cynic might believe that the D.C. Council acted in such a low-key manner by design. The council did not approve the mandate as a stand-alone bill, but wrapped it into a 297-page Budget Support Act. That bill contains such unrelated provisions as an amendment regarding the Fort Dupont Ice Arena, technical corrections to a supermarket tax incentive program, and amendments regarding civic associations using public schools.
Likewise, a press release by the D.C. Council summarizing Wednesday’s meeting contained not a word about imposing the individual mandate, nor did the council website show any stand-alone votes on the mandate itself. This lack of disclosure pushed me to contact my council member, Charles Allen, to find out what had happened at the council meeting Wednesday.
Upon hearing that the mandate as passed of a much larger package, I asked one of Allen’s staffers whether this provision had been “snuck in at the last minute.” The staffer said DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had proposed the mandate as part of her budget submission to the council back in March. He then rather sheepishly added that, while people had testified on behalf of other portions of the Budget Support Act, no one had spoken about the mandate specifically.
These circumstances make it quite reasonable to ask whether Bowser and the D.C. Council deliberately contrived a set of circumstances to avoid public scrutiny of the mandate. Placing the provision among hundreds of pages of technical and relatively non-controversial amendments—and not even highlighting its approval in a press release summarizing the meeting—seems designed to avoid a high-profile debate. A vote on a stand-alone bill imposing a mandate could create political controversy, so the council may have conspired to avoid it.
For a district that decries “Taxation Without Representation,” this Nancy Pelosi-esque behavior—where we literally had to pass the bill to find out what was in it—seems to embody the very congressional tactics that DC leaders love to hate.
Harsher Penalties for Violators
During the 2009-10 debate on Obamacare, the threat of penalties for violating the individual mandate became a source of intense controversy. During the Senate Finance Committee’s markup, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) received a handwritten note from Thomas Barthold, head of the Joint Committee on Taxation, stating that, under federal law, non-payment of the mandate tax could result in imprisonment. Democrats buckled under this political pressure, removing from the Internal Revenue Service the power to imprison violators, or impose liens on personal property, for non-payment of the mandate tax.
By contrast, the district’s mandate—which comprises pages 168-182 of the Budget Support Act—includes this language at the bottom of page 180:
“A taxpayer who fails to pay the District of Columbia shared responsibility payment imposed…shall be subject to all collection, enforcement, and administrative provisions applicable to unpaid taxes or fees, as provided in Chapter 18, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, and Chapter 44 of this title [emphasis mine].”
Unlike the federal Internal Revenue Code, it does not appear at first glance that the district’s tax law allows for imprisoning individuals for non-payment of taxes (as opposed to deliberate tax evasion or fraud). However, Chapter 44 includes the following language:
If a person determined to be liable to the District of Columbia for a tax neglects or refuses to pay the tax within 10 days after notice and demand, the Mayor may collect the tax, with interest and penalties thereon (and an amount sufficient to cover the expenses of the levy), by levy upon all property (including rights to property) of the person or on which there is a lien provided in this chapter for the payment of the tax.
The statute goes on to say that “the term ‘levy’ includes the exercise of the power of distraint and seizure by any means.…If the Mayor levies upon property, the Mayor may seize and sell the property.” In other words, if a district resident won’t buy “government-approved” health insurance, and won’t (or can’t) pay the tax for not doing so, the district has the right to seize, and sell, that person’s property.
No wonder the D.C. Council didn’t want to hold an up-or-down vote on just this provision.
...
http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/03/dc-passes-law-requiring-people-buy-health-insurance-property-seized/
JULY 3, 2018
Just when you think the move for government control of health care couldn’t get any worse, somehow it manages to. Last Wednesday, the District of Columbia City Council approved a requirement for all DC residents to purchase health insurance. The mandate would take effect in January, right when the federal mandate penalty drops to $0, as per last year’s tax law.
The D.C. mandate contains three elements that make it just as bad as, if not worse than, the federal mandate it is intended to replace.
A (Deliberately?) Opaque Process
Suffice it to say that the district’s individual mandate did not attract much attention. Unlike last week’s initiative vote on raising wages for tipped workers, or the battle over “right-to-die” legislation in the nation’s capital, restoring the individual mandate has slipped below the news radar screen. Some online searching Thursday found no references to the D.C. Council’s mandate vote in the Washington Post, or (but for a brief blurb in Politico) other online news articles discussing recent developments.
A cynic might believe that the D.C. Council acted in such a low-key manner by design. The council did not approve the mandate as a stand-alone bill, but wrapped it into a 297-page Budget Support Act. That bill contains such unrelated provisions as an amendment regarding the Fort Dupont Ice Arena, technical corrections to a supermarket tax incentive program, and amendments regarding civic associations using public schools.
Likewise, a press release by the D.C. Council summarizing Wednesday’s meeting contained not a word about imposing the individual mandate, nor did the council website show any stand-alone votes on the mandate itself. This lack of disclosure pushed me to contact my council member, Charles Allen, to find out what had happened at the council meeting Wednesday.
Upon hearing that the mandate as passed of a much larger package, I asked one of Allen’s staffers whether this provision had been “snuck in at the last minute.” The staffer said DC Mayor Muriel Bowser had proposed the mandate as part of her budget submission to the council back in March. He then rather sheepishly added that, while people had testified on behalf of other portions of the Budget Support Act, no one had spoken about the mandate specifically.
These circumstances make it quite reasonable to ask whether Bowser and the D.C. Council deliberately contrived a set of circumstances to avoid public scrutiny of the mandate. Placing the provision among hundreds of pages of technical and relatively non-controversial amendments—and not even highlighting its approval in a press release summarizing the meeting—seems designed to avoid a high-profile debate. A vote on a stand-alone bill imposing a mandate could create political controversy, so the council may have conspired to avoid it.
For a district that decries “Taxation Without Representation,” this Nancy Pelosi-esque behavior—where we literally had to pass the bill to find out what was in it—seems to embody the very congressional tactics that DC leaders love to hate.
Harsher Penalties for Violators
During the 2009-10 debate on Obamacare, the threat of penalties for violating the individual mandate became a source of intense controversy. During the Senate Finance Committee’s markup, Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) received a handwritten note from Thomas Barthold, head of the Joint Committee on Taxation, stating that, under federal law, non-payment of the mandate tax could result in imprisonment. Democrats buckled under this political pressure, removing from the Internal Revenue Service the power to imprison violators, or impose liens on personal property, for non-payment of the mandate tax.
By contrast, the district’s mandate—which comprises pages 168-182 of the Budget Support Act—includes this language at the bottom of page 180:
“A taxpayer who fails to pay the District of Columbia shared responsibility payment imposed…shall be subject to all collection, enforcement, and administrative provisions applicable to unpaid taxes or fees, as provided in Chapter 18, Chapter 41, Chapter 42, Chapter 43, and Chapter 44 of this title [emphasis mine].”
Unlike the federal Internal Revenue Code, it does not appear at first glance that the district’s tax law allows for imprisoning individuals for non-payment of taxes (as opposed to deliberate tax evasion or fraud). However, Chapter 44 includes the following language:
If a person determined to be liable to the District of Columbia for a tax neglects or refuses to pay the tax within 10 days after notice and demand, the Mayor may collect the tax, with interest and penalties thereon (and an amount sufficient to cover the expenses of the levy), by levy upon all property (including rights to property) of the person or on which there is a lien provided in this chapter for the payment of the tax.
The statute goes on to say that “the term ‘levy’ includes the exercise of the power of distraint and seizure by any means.…If the Mayor levies upon property, the Mayor may seize and sell the property.” In other words, if a district resident won’t buy “government-approved” health insurance, and won’t (or can’t) pay the tax for not doing so, the district has the right to seize, and sell, that person’s property.
No wonder the D.C. Council didn’t want to hold an up-or-down vote on just this provision.
...
http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/03/dc-passes-law-requiring-people-buy-health-insurance-property-seized/