Congress’s decision to delay three Obamacare taxes will increase the national debt by $31 billion over the next decade, according to a new estimate.
The Joint Committee on Taxation released an estimate Tuesday on the bottom-line impact of the delays, which were put into a short-term spending deal that ended a three-day government shutdown on Monday.
That bill delayed for two years a tax on medical device makers and a tax on high-cost health plans, called the “Cadillac” tax. It also delayed a tax on Obamacare insurers for one year starting in 2019.
The Cadillac tax had already been delayed until 2020 and will now be delayed until 2022. The medical device tax and insurer taxes both were delayed in 2015 and went back into effect in 2018.
The delay on the medical device tax goes into effect this year, while insurers still have to pay it this year. The one-year delay for insurers won’t go into effect until 2019.
