A final thought, I hope, on the IRS/tea party scandal: Why do we want the IRS  regulating political speech?  It seems crazy on its face, yet that is exactly the system we have created. True, the agency bungled its scrutiny of conservative political groups seeking tax-exemptions. But should it even be deciding which political organizations should get favored [...]

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was not primarily a tax law but it certainly affects the federal taxes that same-sex couples pay. In fact, taxes are the basis for the second of the two cases concerning same-sex marriage that the Supreme Court will hear this week. Although the federal government generally recognizes state [...]

Earlier this week, I concluded that the Affordable Care Act’s tax on those who do not have health insurance will be both modest and difficult for the IRS to collect. But will it be enough to encourage people to buy coverage?  If not, healthy people may opt out until they get sick, a decision that [...]

The Affordable Care Act’s tax on those who choose not to buy health insurance was the linchpin of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the law’s constitutionality. But in reality, the tax (nee penalty) is a mouse. The tax itself is modest, at least to start. It will affect relatively few people. And it will be [...]

In its long-awaited decision on the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can require people to either have health insurance or pay a tax if they don’t.   Because the High Court found that the penalty for not having coverage is a tax and not a fee or a banana, it [...]

There is more to the Affordable Care Act than the individual mandate. There are also, for example, taxes. And since this is TaxVox, I thought it would be useful to think about some of those revenue provisions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s three-day hearing on the fate of the ACA. The law includes [...]