Can the President still say that the mandate is not a "tax"??

[treestar]

71. Well, that's what the Court said

It likened it to mortgage deductions or credits for education. The tax system is used to encourage a certain behavior. That is permissible under the constitution, as a valid exercise of the taxing power.



None of this is to say that the payment is not intended to affect individual conduct. Although the payment willraise considerable revenue, it is plainly designed to expand health insurance coverage. But taxes that seek to influence conduct are nothing new. Some of our earliest federal taxes sought to deter the purchase of imported manufactured goods in order to foster the growth of domestic industry. See W. Brownlee, Federal Taxation in America 22 (2d ed. 2004); cf. 2 J. Story, Commentaries onthe Constitution of the United States §962, p. 434 (1833) (“the taxing power is often, very often, applied for otherpurposes, than revenue”). Today, federal and state taxes can compose more than half the retail price of cigarettes, not just to raise more money, but to encourage people to quit smoking. And we have upheld such obviously regulatory measures as taxes on selling marijuana and sawed-off shotguns. See United States v. Sanchez, 340 U. S. 42, 44– 45 (1950); Sonzinsky v. United States, 300 U. S. 506, 513 (1937). Indeed, “[e]very tax is in some measure regulatory. To some extent it interposes an economic impediment to the activity taxed as compared with others not taxed.” Sonzinsky, supra, at 513. That §5000A seeks to shape decisions about whether to buy health insurance does not mean that it cannot be a valid exercise of the taxing power.


Opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.
Cite as: 567 U. S. ____ (2012) 37
Opinion of the Court

Congress’s use of the Taxing Clause to encourage buying something is, by contrast, not new. Tax incentives already promote,for example, purchasing homes and professional educations. See 26 U. S. C. §§163(h), 25A. Sustaining the mandate as a tax depends only on whether Congress has properly exercised its taxing power to encourage purchasing health insurance, not whether it can. Upholding theindividual mandate under the Taxing Clause thus does not recognize any new federal power. It determines that Congress has used an existing one.