OK. Let's be clear up front that everything I'm about to say will not have even the slightest effect on what passes as "thinking" among the Teabaggers. These are the people who are still demanding to see Obama's birth certificate after all, so the normal rules of cognition really don't apply.
But you've been hearing a lot about how the Supreme Court has ruled the mandate in the Affordable Care Act is a tax. And you're probably been hearing about it IN ALL CAPS AND FOLLOWED BY LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Usually followed by a demand to repeal Obamacare. And then a demand to see Obama's birth certificate.
More below the Squiggle of Freedom
The fact is that the Supreme Court ruled no such thing. John Roberts did. When you drill down into the majority decision, you find that four of the five justices found that the mandate IS an acceptable use of the Commerce Clause. In a dicta, which is a non-binding "aside" by one of the justices, Roberts added his own opinion that while the mandate was not constitutional under the Commerce Clause, it was constitutional under the tax authority of Congress.
So Roberts was siding with the majority with regard to whether the mandate is constitutional, but disagreeing with the majority as to WHY it is constitutional. To put it another way, of the nine justices on the Supreme Court, eight of them do not believe that the mandate is a tax. Only one of them, John Roberts, believes that it is.
John Roberts is not the Supreme Court, and his dicta comments do not carry the weight of precedent. So when the Teabaggers claim that the Supreme Court ruled the mandate to be a tax, the response is that they did no such thing. The Supreme Court ruled by a 5-4 decision that the mandate is constitutional and struck down the idea that the mandate is a tax by a vote of 8-1.