It may be too soon for the Supreme Court to decide on the health care law if the penalty is deemed a tax. The Anti-Injunction act says you can’t challenge the payment of a tax ahead of time. “If that was accepted by the Supreme Court, it would kick the can down the road,” says Robert Reinstein, a professor at Temple’s Beasley School of Law. “In other words, they wouldn’t be deciding the merits now. They’d be delaying it for at least two years,” when the mandate is scheduled to take effect in 2014.