If the income tax isn't bad enough...
Today, while I obsess about the complexity of the income tax, Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute reminds me in this op-ed that Obamacare will soon bring us a slew of new taxes:
• “Breath tax”: The infamous “death tax” now has a new sibling: the $17 billion “breath tax.” The new health overhaul law requires everyone in America who breathes to have health insurance by 2014; … Internal Revenue Commissioner Douglas Shulman said that enforcement of the individual mandate will come by seizing tax refunds and “collection, if need be.”
• Taxes on medical devices: Surgical scissors, wheelchairs, intravenous bags, dental retainers and braces, CT scanners, stretchers, exam room tables, heart stents, pacemakers, surgical gloves, spineboards at every local pool, scales at a doctor’s office or health club, any diagnostic test for any disease or condition -– all will be among the products and procedures subject to ObamaCare’s special $20 billion medical device tax.
This is one of the more horrible taxes, as the result will be to confiscate money needed for new innovative breakthroughs.
• New Tax on Health Insurance Providers: So starting in 2014, Americans will be forced to buy health insurance, and the federal government will be actively making it more expensive.
And then there’s the new “investment” tax.
Even middle-class homeowners who realize a capital gain of $250,000 or more on the sale of their home will be hit by this Medicare tax, which will drain another $123.4 billion out of taxpayers’ pockets and into the government’s coffers over seven years.
• New Drug Tax: The public can expect to have these costs passed on to them in the form of higher drug prices and higher insurance costs.
Simply put, this health overhaul plan will take at least $569 billion out of the pockets of taxpayers and businesses over the next ten years through new and higher taxes, and will make the problems of soaring health costs even worse.
Boy, I’m sure glad Obama campaigned on the promise not to raise taxes on the middle class.
stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com |
