A bill to extend this year’s tax cuts would also put a five-year moratorium on the medical device tax enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Although the 2.3% levy on prescribed medical devices was enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, it didn’t go into effect until 2012 and was mothballed two years later; that moratorium, extended earlier this year, was slated to end in 2020.
The U.S. House Ways & Means Committee yesterday released the tax extenders legislation including the new moratorium, which would pause the tax until 2025. The House has voted several times for an outright repeal of the levy, only to see those bills die in the Senate.
“This package delivers bipartisan relief from some of Obamacare’s most egregious taxes including ones that stifle innovation, reduce jobs, and increase the cost of families’ health insurance,” Ways & Means chairman Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said in prepared remarks.
“The medical device excise tax is bad health policy and bad economic policy. No one disagrees on these points. We applaud the committee for including a 5-year extension of the moratorium on the tax in its new extenders package, and we thank congressional medtech champions Rep. Erik Paulsen (r-Minn.), Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) and chairman Kevin Brady for spearheading this piece of the bill,” added AdvaMed president & CEO Scott Whitaker. “A 5-year moratorium will give companies greater confidence in planning long-term R&D—a component that is critical to maintaining the longevity of the industry and sustaining the innovation ecosystem. Future breakthroughs in patient care are undermined by the threat of the medical device tax.”
