A majority of the Fourth Circuit panel reasoned that the individual mandate’spenalty is a tax within the meaning of the Anti-Injunction Act, because it is a financial assessment collected by the IRS through the normal means of taxation. The majoritytherefore determined that the plaintiffs could not challenge the individual mandate until after they paid thepenalty.1
—————— 1The Eleventh Circuit did not consider whether the Anti-Injunction Act bars challenges to the individual mandate. The District Court had determined that it did not, and neither side challenged that holding on appeal. The same was true in the Fourth Circuit, but that court examined the question sua sponte because it viewed the Anti-InjunctionAct as a limit on its subject matter jurisdiction. See Liberty Univ., 671
We granted certiorari to review the judgment of theCourt of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit with respect toboth the individual mandate and the Medicaid expansion. 565 U. S. ___ (2011). Because no party supports the Eleventh Circuit’s holding that the individual mandate canbe completely severed from the remainder of the AffordableCare Act, we appointed an amicus curiae to defend that aspect of the judgment below. And because there is a reasonable argument that the Anti-Injunction Act deprives us of jurisdiction to hear challenges to the individual mandate, but no party supports that proposition, weappointed an amicus curiae to advance it.2
II Before turning to the merits, we need to be sure we have the authority to do so. The Anti-Injunction Act provides that “no suit for the purpose of restraining the assessmentor collection of any tax shall be maintained in any court by any person, whether or not such person is the per-son against whom such tax was assessed.” 26 U. S. C. §7421(a). This statute protects the Government’s abilityto collect a consistent stream of revenue, by barring litigation
to enjoin or otherwise obstruct the collection of taxes. Because of the Anti-Injunction Act, taxes can ordinarily be ——————
2We appointed H. Bartow Farr III to brief and argue in support of theEleventh Circuit’s judgment with respect to severability, and Robert A.Long to brief and argue the proposition that the Anti-Injunction Act bars the current challenges to the individual mandate. 565 U. S. ___ (2011). Both amici have ably discharged their assigned responsibilities.
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challenged only after they are paid, by suing for a refund.See Enochs v. Williams Packing & Nav. Co., 370 U. S. 1, 7–8 (1962).
The penalty for not complying with the Affordable CareAct’s individual mandate first becomes enforceable in 2014. The present challenge to the mandate thus seeks to restrain the penalty’s future collection. Amicus contends that the Internal Revenue Code treats the penalty as atax, and that the Anti-Injunction Act therefore bars thissuit.
The text of the pertinent statutes suggests otherwise.The Anti-Injunction Act applies to suits “for the purposeof restraining the assessment or collection of any tax.” §7421(a) (emphasis added). Congress, however, chose todescribe the “hared responsibility payment” imposed onthose who forgo health insurance not as a “tax,” but as a“penalty.” §§5000A(b), (g)(2). There is no immediate reason to think that a statute applying to “any tax” wouldapply to a “penalty.”
Congress’s decision to label this exaction a “penalty”rather than a “tax” is significant because the AffordableCare Act describes many other exactions it creates as“taxes.” See Thomas More, 651 F. 3d, at 551. Where Congress uses certain language in one part of a statuteand different language in another, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally. See Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983).
Amicus argues that even though Congress did not label the shared responsibility payment a tax, we should treat itas such under the Anti-Injunction Act because it functionslike a tax. It is true that Congress cannot change whether an exaction is a tax or a penalty for constitutional purposes simply by describing it as one or the other. Congressmay not, for example, expand its power under the TaxingClause, or escape the Double Jeopardy Clause’s constraint on criminal sanctions, by labeling a severe financial pun13
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ishment a “tax.” See Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., 259
U. S. 20, 36–37 (1922); Department of Revenue of Mont. v. Kurth Ranch, 511 U. S. 767, 779 (1994).
The Anti-Injunction Act and the Affordable Care Act,however, are creatures of Congress’s own creation. How they relate to each other is up to Congress, and the bestevidence of Congress’s intent is the statutory text. We have thus applied the Anti-Injunction Act to statutorily described “taxes” even where that label was inaccurate. See Bailey v. George, 259 U. S. 16 (1922) (Anti-InjunctionAct applies to “Child Labor Tax” struck down as exceeding Congress’s taxing power in Drexel Furniture).
Congress can, of course, describe something as a penalty but direct that it nonetheless be treated as a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act. For example, 26 U. S. C. §6671(a) provides that “any reference in this title to ‘tax’ imposed by this title shall be deemed also to refer to the penalties and liabilities provided by” subchapter 68B of the Internal Revenue Code. Penalties in subchapter 68B are thus treated as taxes under Title 26, which includes the Anti-Injunction Act. The individual mandate, however, is not in subchapter 68B of the Code. Nor does anyother provision state that references to taxes in Title 26 shall also be “deemed” to apply to the individual mandate.
Amicus attempts to show that Congress did render theAnti-Injunction Act applicable to the individual mandate,albeit by a more circuitous route. Section 5000A(g)(1) specifies that the penalty for not complying with the man- date “shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as an assessable penalty under subchapter B of chapter 68.” Assessable penalties in subchapter 68B, in turn,“shall be assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes.” §6671(a). According to amicus, by directing thatthe penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner as taxes,” §5000A(g)(1) made the Anti-Injunction Act applicable to this penalty.
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The Government disagrees. It argues that §5000A(g)(1) does not direct courts to apply the Anti-Injunction Act,because §5000A(g) is a directive only to the Secretary of the Treasury to use the same “‘methodology and procedures’” to collect the penalty that he uses to collect taxes. Brief for United States 32–33 (quoting Seven-Sky, 661
F. 3d, at 11).
We think the Government has the better reading. As it observes, “Assessment” and “Collection” are chapters of the Internal Revenue Code providing the Secretary authority to assess and collect taxes, and generally specifyingthe means by which he shall do so. See §6201 (assessment authority); §6301 (collection authority). Section 5000A(g)(1)’s command that the penalty be “assessed and collected in the same manner” as taxes is best read as referring to those chapters and giving the Secretary thesame authority and guidance with respect to the penalty. That interpretation is consistent with the remainder of§5000A(g), which instructs the Secretary on the tools hemay use to collect the penalty. See §5000A(g)(2)(A) (barring criminal prosecutions); §5000A(g)(2)(B) (prohibiting the Secretary from using notices of lien and levies). The Anti-Injunction Act, by contrast, says nothing about the procedures to be used in assessing and collecting taxes.
Amicus argues in the alternative that a different sectionof the Internal Revenue Code requires courts to treat the penalty as a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act. Section 6201(a) authorizes the Secretary to make “assessments of all taxes (including interest, additional amounts, additionsto the tax, and assessable penalties).” (Emphasis added.) Amicus contends that the penalty must be a tax, becauseit is an assessable penalty and §6201(a) says that taxesinclude assessable penalties.
That argument has force only if §6201(a) is read inisolation. The Code contains many provisions treatingtaxes and assessable penalties as distinct terms. See, e.g.,
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§§860(h)(1), 6324A(a), 6601(e)(1)–(2), 6602, 7122(b). There would, for example, be no need for §6671(a) to deem “tax”to refer to certain assessable penalties if the Code already included all such penalties in the term “tax.” Indeed, amicus’s earlier observation that the Code requiresassessable penalties to be assessed and collected “in thesame manner as taxes” makes little sense if assessable penalties are themselves taxes. In light of the Code’s consistent distinction between the terms “tax” and “assessable penalty,” we must accept the Government’s interpretation: §6201(a) instructs the Secretary that his authority to assess taxes includes the authority to assesspenalties, but it does not equate assessable penalties totaxes for other purposes.
The Affordable Care Act does not require that the penalty for failing to comply with the individual mandate betreated as a tax for purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act.The Anti-Injunction Act therefore does not apply to thissuit, and we may proceed to the merits.
III The
