How to delay Obamacare

From an email correspondent in the Midwest comes a suggestion on how to delay Obamacare:

In the wake of all the Obamacare startup problems, we need another Beardsley Ruml. If we could grant 75% foregiveness of the lesser of one’s 1942 or 1943 income tax liability in return for establishing withholding, why not delay Obamacare’s individual mandate in exchange for ‘working out the bugs’? (Of course, the biblical seven years times seven might be more like it.)

In the early 1940s, Congress vastly increased income tax rates in order to pay for war spending. At that time, there was no income tax withholding: You paid your income tax for, say, 1939, by April 15, 1940. Since before 1940 most people did not pay income tax at all, and since the affluent who did pay income tax could draw interest on the money made in 1939 until April 15, 1940, no one objected much to the system.