U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. October 9, 2016. U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Mike Scarcella/ALM)

Members of the House voted 419-6 today for H.R. 748, a bill that could repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) “Cadillac plan” excise tax.

The implementation date of the ACA tax has been repeatedly postponed. If implemented, the provision would impose a 40 percent excise tax on what the government classifies as high-cost employer-sponsored health benefits packages.

Supporters argue that the provision could help keep the federal health group health tax benefits exclusion from encouraging employers to drive up the cost of healthcare, by offering increasingly generous health benefits packages without much thought about the true cost of healthcare.

Opponents say the provision could hurt the workers in group health plans.

In the past, efforts to repeal the Cadillac plan tax have run into trouble when Congress has tried to search for other cost-cutting or revenue-raising measures to compensate for the loss of anticipated Cadillac plan tax revenue.

The Joint Committee on Taxation has predicted that implementing the tax could raise about $20 billion in tax revenue per year.

H.R. 748 includes a provision that would permit Congress to repeal the Cadillac plan tax without compensating for the effects of repeal on the federal budget deficit.

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Resources

The full H.R. 748 vote tally is available here.

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Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.

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