Thursday, June 25, 2015

King v. Burwell Approves of Tax Credits for Purchasers of Insurance through Federal Exchanges

The Supreme Court has issued its opinion in King v. Burwell today.  In a majority opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts (and joined by Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan), the Court interpreted the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide tax credits to those who enroll in an insurance plan through a federal exchange in a state that has not established its own exchange.  The decision is of interest to the nonprofit health care sector for obvious reasons.  The decision is also of interest to legal scholars because of its non-reliance on the interpretation of the ACA offered by the Internal Revenue Service, the agency charged with administering the tax credit, and its emphasis on purpose and context as tools of statutory interpretation.  The remainder of this post discusses the opinion in more detail.

 

The Supreme Court majority opinion describes the precise issue as follows:

 

The issue in this case is whether the Act’s tax credits are available in States that have a Federal Exchange rather than a State Exchange. The Act initially provides that tax credits “shall be allowed” for any “applicable taxpayer.” 26 U. S. C. §36B(a). The Act then provides that the amount of the tax credit depends in part on whether the taxpayer has enrolled in an insurance plan through “an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [hereinafter 42 U. S. C. §18031].” 26 U. S. C. §§36B(b)–(c) (emphasis added).

 

The IRS addressed the availability of tax credits by promulgating a rule that made them available on both State and Federal Exchanges. 77 Fed. Reg. 30378 (2012). As relevant here, the IRS Rule provides that a taxpayer is eligible for a tax credit if he enrolled in an insurance plan through “an Exchange,” 26 CFR §1.36B–2 (2013), which is defined as “an Exchange serving the individual market . . . regardless of whether the Exchange is established and operated by a State . . . or by HHS,” 45 CFR §155.20 (2014).

 

The plaintiffs in the case, residents of a state (Virginia) that did not establish its own exchange, did not want health insurance.  They argued that the federal exchange operating in Virginia failed to qualify under the ACA as “an Exchange established by the State,” and therefore they were entitled to no tax credit for the purchase of insurance.  Without the credits, now provided by Section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code, the plaintiffs’ cost of insurance would exceed eight percent of their income, and thus the ACA would exempt them from the ACA’s general mandatory coverage.  Under the IRS’s interpretation of the ACA, however, the exchange operating in Virginia was a state exchange under the ACA, and thus the plaintiffs qualified for the credit and were not exempt from mandatory coverage. As the Court observed, “[t]he IRS Rule therefore requires petitioners to either buy health insurance they do not want, or make a payment to the IRS.”

 

The Court first declined to defer to the IRS’s interpretation of the statute.  I reproduce the key language in full:

 

When analyzing an agency’s interpretation of a statute, we often apply the two-step framework announced in Chevron, 467 U. S. 837. Under that framework, we ask whether the statute is ambiguous and, if so, whether the agency’s interpretation is reasonable. Id., at 842–843. This approach “is premised on the theory that a statute’s ambiguity constitutes an implicit delegation from Congress to the agency to fill in the statutory gaps.” FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp., 529 U. S. 120, 159 (2000). “In extraordinary cases, however, there may be reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress has intended such an implicit delegation.” Ibid.

 

This is one of those cases. The tax credits are among the Act’s key reforms, involving billions of dollars in spending each year and affecting the price of health insurance for millions of people. Whether those credits are available on Federal Exchanges is thus a question of deep “economic and political significance” that is central to this statutory scheme; had Congress wished to assign that question to an agency, it surely would have done so expressly. Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, 573 U. S. ___, ___ (2014) (slip op., at 19) (quoting Brown & Williamson, 529 U. S., at 160). It is especially unlikely that Congress would have delegated this decision to the IRS, which has no expertise in crafting health insurance policy of this sort. See Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U. S. 243, 266–267 (2006). This is not a case for the IRS.

 

It is instead our task to determine the correct reading of Section 36B.

 

The Court then found that the phrase, “an Exchange established by the State under [42 U. S. C. §18031],” is ambiguous.  Consequently, the Court concluded that it “must turn to the broader structure of the Act to determine the meaning of Section 36B.”  The Court rejected the plaintiffs’ statutory interpretation “because it would destabilize the individual insurance market in any State with a Federal Exchange, and likely create the very ‘death spirals’ that Congress designed the Act to avoid.”  The Court further opined that the structure of Code section 36B supported its interpretation, for under the contrary view, “Congress made the viability of the entire Affordable Care Act turn on the ultimate ancillary provision: a sub-sub-sub section of the Tax Code.”  The concluding substantive paragraph of the majority opinion summarizes the decision as follows:

 

Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter. Section 36B can fairly be read consistent with what we see as Congress’s plan, and that is the reading we adopt.

 

JRB

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2015/06/king-v-burwell-approves-of-tax-credits-for-purchasers-of-insurance-through-federal-exchanges.html

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