August 20, 2014 by Brad Perriello
A U.S. Treasury report on Obamacare’s medical device tax reveals that the IRS is having problems figuring out which companies should be paying the 2.3% sales tax and that the tax bureau is only collecting about 76% of the tax it thinks is owed.
Not even the IRS can make sense of the medical device tax, a provision of the Affordable Care Act requiring medical device companies to pay a 2.3% levy on all U.S. sales, according to a report from a U.S. Treasury inspector general.
The tax is imposed on all U.S. sales of prescribed medical devices and contains a “retail exemption” on devices sold to the general public, such as contact lenses or diabetes devices and supplies. Estimates on the amount the tax is expected to range vary, from $30 billion over 10 years to the Joint Committee on Taxation’s forecast for $20 billion for fiscal years 2013 through 2019.
