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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

We will see if SCOTUS majority decides tariffs are a tax or not and push the absurdity of their position even farther.

I fear that they already decided that issue when they chose not to intervene and now have the excuse of "lol well can't undo it now" ready to go.

Edit: It appears Trump & Co intend to replace SCOTUS if they lose the tariffs ruling ... https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/us/politics/trump-tariffs...

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There does seem to be indications that the actual tariffs collected seems far lower than the actual tariffs promised, likely just half of what was promised:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/03/business/economy/trump-ta...

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The NYT article says they plan to replace the tariffs, not SCOTUS. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually get to that point.

SCOTUS will not get replaced, he doesn't have the support in the Senate to confirm anyone.

I remember the justification for Obama Care was by calling it a 'type of tax'. Which actually was the reason to negate the rights argument at the time, they were using to cancel it. The government is allowed to create 'taxes', and since it was a 'type of tax', it is allowed.

Specifically Congress. The President doesn’t have the right to create taxes which is one key difference here. The argument is whether Congress abdicated their power here and whether that’s something they can do in the first place.

> The argument is whether Congress abdicated their power here and whether that’s something they can do in the first place.

It would seem that as elected representatives of the people (we are literally their boss), they can't do that without asking us first. The whole point of them existing is to give us power and limit the executive's power, not the opposite.

It's called the nondelegation doctrine, which forbids one branch of government from authorizing another branch of government to exercise its functions.

Because Article One vests "all legislative powers" to Congress, they cannot delegate legislative powers to the Executive and Judicial branches (because then not all legislative powers would be vested with Congress).

How does that not prohibit delegation of Federal regulations to the Executive Branch?

Sorry. Yes. This is the crux of it.

Congress can create taxes. ACA was created by Congress not the president in isolation.

Tariff issue is because president is making taxes unilaterally.

I think the opposition wanted to toss the entire ACA system calling it a tax. However, SCOTUS took a more piecemeal approach than the opposition wished and removed the bit they felt was a tax and left the ACA unaffected generally.

What part of ACA did SCOTUS remove? In this ruling, it was only the Medicaid expansion that was struck down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Federation_of_Indepen...

The 2017 TCJA removed the individual mandate. Presumably, that is what FrustratedMonky and kccqzy are referring to.

Obviously, the ACA made it so all health insurance premiums have a large "tax" component, due to the extremely narrow underwriting criteria health insurers are allowed to use. The individual mandate had previously applied a tax to all taxpayers, but after TCJA 2017, the tax is only paid by people with health insurance.

https://www.healthcare.gov/how-plans-set-your-premiums/

https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/individuals-and-fami...

>Enacted in December 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the shared responsibility payment to zero for tax year 2019 and all subsequent years.

I don't think the opposition was using 'its a tax' as argument to cancel ACA, since the SC Ruling that saved ACA was made by saying congress is allowed to created taxes, and this was a 'type of tax'.

If calling it a tax saved it, that would then not be a good argument to get rid of it.

SCOTUS has been reasoning backward from their blatant partisanship for a couple decades now. It used to have a bit of randomness with some justices defecting with "reasoned arguments", but that's basically over now.

That’s just the justification for the individual responsibility penalty. SCOTUS justified the penalty by saying it is a tax on inaction.

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