On December 14th, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent this letter to House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady and Ranking Member Richard Neal regarding bills recently introduced to delay PPACA taxes imposed on health insurance premiums, medical devices, businesses, and consumers.
December 14, 2017
Dear Chairman Brady and Ranking Member Neal:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce appreciates your continued commitment to providing individuals, seniors, small businesses and companies important and needed relief from the myriad of taxes imposed on health insurance premiums, medical devices, businesses, and consumers. Specifically, we appreciate legislative efforts to suspend and provide relief from a number of taxes originally imposed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), including:
- H.R. 4620, a bill that would suspend the health insurance tax for 2018 and 2019;
- H.R. 4617, a bill that would delay the reimposition of the medical device tax until 2023;
- H.R. 4616, which would provide a retrospective and prospective moratorium on the employer mandate until 2019 and further push back the effective date of the excise tax on employer sponsored plans until 2021;
- H.R. 4618, which would ease the restrictions limiting the use of tax-preferred funds to purchase over-the-counter items; and
- H.R. 4619, a bill that would provide relief from the health insurance tax for those with health plans regulated by Puerto Rico.
We share your goals of protecting individuals, small businesses, manufacturers and job-creators from these burdensome and costly taxes imposed by the PPACA. We look forward to working with you to address some technical issues that remain with H.R. 4620 in order to finalize and enact legislation to advance these goals. Thank you for your leadership on these issues of extreme importance.
