Generally speaking I despise the tax system. Rather than serving it’s proper purpose of paying for necessary government services such as law enforcement, defense, and infrastructure it has, in many instances, been used to punish and reward certain segments of the population depending on which ideologues hold the reins of power.

Even more insidious is the way it’s been used for social engineering. Using public funds to pay for abortion, or worse funding the purchase of educational materials to indoctrinate students in the philosophy of the L.G.B.T. community or so called historical texts that are inherently Anti-American.

However, there are those rare instances when our system of tax collection has been used for the public good. One that quickly springs to mind is the jailing of nefarious gangster Al Capone for failure to file a return.

The most recent example is the dismantling of socialized medicine in the United States.

For eight years Republicans have been promising to repeal and replace the Democrat’s take over of the American medical system known as Obama-Care.

Given that they control both the legislative and executive branches of government it was anticipated that this would occur shortly after the new President had been sworn in. Instead, despite repeated attempts, neither the House or the Senate were able to reach consensus and muster the number of votes required to pass the legislation. Obama-Care remains the law of the land.

Law suits challenging the Affordable Care Act by individuals, groups and state governments eventually found themselves before the Supreme Court. Prior to this the Obama administration had maintained that the mandate requiring citizens to purchase health care as laid out in the provisions of the bill was not a tax. Realizing that the only way to keep the court from overturning this signature piece of legislation would require them to do an about face, that is exactly what they did and proceeded to defend it on the basis that the “individual mandate” was in fact a tax and on that basis the Supreme Court upheld it.

Having failed to repeal the ACA, The President turned his attention to tax reform. In the process members of the Republican controlled senate came to the realization that the lynch pin of Obama-Care was the funding mechanism, the tax. By eliminating this the system would collapse. So that is what they proposed.

While the House was originally opposed to this, once it came to reconciliation of the House and Senate bills, the House acquiesced. And so the removal of the individual mandate requiring taxpayers to purchase health care or be fined by the Internal Revenue Service will be eliminated and ultimately The “The Affordable Health Care Act” with it. By seeking to save it by defining it as a tax the Democrats find themselves “hoisted by their own petard.”

A perfect example of poetic justice and a proper use of the tax system.

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