Politics for Pros- moderated Message Board

Sponsor

To: goldworldnet who wrote (493770)	7/2/2012 12:22:53 AM
From: Little Joe	of 536508

I do not agree that it was always a tax. I think the dissenters were correct. Here is the language: Our cases establish a clear line between a tax and a penalty:“‘[A] tax is an enforced contribution to provide for the support of government; a penalty . . . is an exaction imposed by statute as punishment for an unlawful act.’” In a few cases, this Court has held that a “tax” imposed upon private conduct was so onerous as to be in effect a penalty. But we have never held—never—that a penalty imposed for violation of the law was so trivial as to be in effect a tax. We have never held that any exaction imposed for violation of the law is an exercise of Congress’ taxing power—even when the statute calls it a tax, much less when (as here) the statute repeatedly calls it a penalty. When an act “adopt[s] the criteria of wrongdoing” and then imposes a monetary penalty as the “principal consequence on those who transgress its standard,” it creates a regulatory penalty, not a tax. lj