Dear Sir,
Please allow a small addition (not a correction) to your useful and thoughtful article about the recently passed U.S. tax law.
Tax attorney Orlando Gotay properly includes repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate to purchase health care, and then adds, “Something tells me the current administration may not make collection of that ... penalty a priority.”
Actually, IRS has lacked the statutory authority to use what they call Enforced Collection Action for that penalty/tax since its inception. Yes, they send notices if unpaid, but there are no levies or other rough stuff against taxpayers. It’s anybody’s guess what they will now do with the (probably) millions of dollars of unpaid penalties now on the books.
Sorry, I don’t have at hand a citation for this, but that is my experience representing U.S. taxpayers before the IRS.
John Robert Stevens, Vista del Lago, Chapala