There are many tax changes coming our way. And for lower-income Americans, one piece of good news is that, if all goes according to plan, one of the most regressive taxes out there is on the way out; this is the repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate, essentially a tax on those too poor to afford health insurance.

Over at Forbes, Ryan Ellis has a breakdown of who pays for it:

According to the IRS, some 6.7 million American families pay Obamacare’s individual mandate surtax, forking over $3 billion annually to Uncle Sam merely for exercising their right not to purchase an unaffordable Obamacare plan. . . .
As you can see, the overwhelming number of taxpayers who face this Obamacare individual mandate surtax make less than $200,000 per year. The great majority of them (80 percent) actually make less than $50,000 per year. This is perhaps the most regressive tax we have on the books today.

For more details, make sure to read Ellis’s article, which has plenty of data.

It will be interesting to see the effects the repeal of the mandate will have on the health-insurance market. Many conservatives assume that this impact will be nowhere near the one predicted by the Congressional Budget Office. Time will tell.

With that done, another much-loathed Obamacare tax will soon be making its return unless Congress acts. Obamacare included a 2.3 percent tax on medical devices, such as X-ray or MRI machines, that took effect in 2013 — but Congress implemented a two-year moratorium in 2016 that is set to expire at the end of the year.

The problem with the medical-device tax is a common one: When you tax something, you get less of it. And fewer life-saving medical devices could mean fewer lives saved. During the tax-reform debate, the Left made a habit of claiming that almost any tax-policy changes, from repealing the individual mandate to reducing excise taxes on alcohol, would lead to more deaths. If there were ever a tax where such a claim could be made, it is the one on medical devices. Yet, as we await its return, there’s radio silence from the “people will die” crowd.

There’s talk of suspending the tax for another five years. Why not just abolish it? Another delay is certainly better than letting the tax return on January 1, but permanent repeal is preferable because it would provide certainty for medical-device manufacturers. The expectation of future taxes can discourage innovation just as much as current taxes can. That’s why it was so critical for tax reform to permanently — not just temporarily — lower the corporate income-tax rate. Oh and by the way, you can pay for the loss of revenue by cutting spending.

Although far from perfect, the tax-reform package that Republicans are set to pass, barring any surprises, will boost economic growth and provide relief for most Americans. Now that they have achieved tax reform after fighting for decades for it, it’s hard to imagine that Republicans want the reinstatement of a destructive tax on life-saving technology to be the post-script to that achievement.