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Congress Passes Two-Year Suspension on Medical Device Excise Tax, Again

January 30, 2018

The Affordable Care Act’s medical device excise tax is off again, for now.

Congress passed a stopgap bill for federal spending through Feb. 8 — after a 3-day government shutdown due to a lack of votes in support of the legislation — that includes the second two-year suspension on the 2.3 percent device excise tax.

The tax was enacted in 2013 as a mechanism to pay for other ACA provisions. It received its first temporary moratorium, with bipartisan support, under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2016 and came back into effect on Jan. 1.

The new two-year suspension had not been included in the original version of H.R. 195, which became law Jan. 22 — just a week before the first payments on the tax were going to be due.

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