No repeal for medical device tax this year

The U.S. Congress entered its end-of-year recess yesterday without acting to further delay or outright repeal the medical device tax, a 2.3% levy on medtech sales that’s set to resume next week after a two-year hiatus.

House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said repealing the medical device tax and others contained in Obamacare will have to wait until early 2018.

“We’ll have to move forward next year on those health-care taxes,” Brady said, according to The Hill. “With the end of the year and tax reform done, that clears the deck to move those things forward.”

Last week Brady and Reps. Erik Paulsen (R-Minn.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) introduced a bill that would suspend the tax for five years. This week the so-called “Problem Solvers Caucus” in the House filed a bill to amend Obamacare that would also do away with the tax, which was in effect for 2014 and 2015 before being put on a two-year moratorium for 2016-2017. It’s slated to resume Jan. 1.

AdvaMed president & CEO Scott Whitaker this week asked the president directly to kill the tax.

The national medical device lobby has long argued that the medical device tax has caused the industry to lose jobs or put off creating jobs, as well as stifle innovation by cutting R&D and slowing capital expansion.

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