Does Health Care Bill include 3.8% Sales Tax on Every Real Estate Sale?

I got an email recently expressing outrage about a provision in the Health Care Bill passed recently that subjects every real estate transaction to a 3.8% sales tax.

Here's what snopes has to say about this:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/realestate.asp

When I read the paragraph in the snopes article that I assume (yes, it's dangerous for me to assume) comes right out of the bill about the 3.8% tax, it sounds like the feds, in 2013, are going to tax...

...the lesser between the two following numbers:

Net Investment Income
-or-
Excess of Modified Adjusted Gross Income over Threshold

If I'm reading it correctly, then:

If EITHER your net investment income is zero, OR your Modified Adjusted Gross Income is below the Threshold, then nothing will be subject to the additional tax.

The other way of looking at it is that you'd have to be BOTH making more than the threshold modified adjusted gross income AND profiting in excess of the allowed deductible amount in certain investments to be subject to any additional tax under this paragraph.

So what is the threshold of allowed non-additionally taxed adjusted gross income?
$250k joint, $125k married filing separate, $200k everyone else.

I don't know what "modified" or "adjusted" mean, specifically, but I assume that it means after certain deductions.

So what is net investment income?
the excess of [certain investment profits including real estate capital gains] OVER [allowable deductions of the certain profit]

With regard to a real estate investment, we are talking about the capital gain that EXCEEDS the $250k/$500k single/married allowed amount. I assume the capital gain in question is for your personal residence, since the $250/$500 is only for a primary residence that you have owned/lived in for 2 out of the last 5 years, right? (the paragraph says "gain from the disposition of certain non-business property")

The bad news is that the 3.8% tax will also apply to not only real estate capital gains above the allowed deduction, but to other investment profits as well, whose allowed deduction amounts I have no idea about. Note, however, your modified adjusted gross income would ALSO have to be in excess of the threshhold or else the whole paragraph is moot.

And, heck, the amount of your real estate capital gain above your allowed $250k/$500k amount is already going to be taxed as capital gain.

So, yes, it's true that this provision in the bill is a new tax, the author of the scare email loses credibility when he/she says this is a "sales tax on all real estate transactions." While snopes can often, in my opinion, be guilty of a liberal slant to their findings, and although I might take issue with their ruling of "mostly false", I must agree that the accusation in the email can also not be judged as "true" either.

I wish the people who start these emails would be careful to be hair-splittingly truthful because it makes the rest of us conservatives look like a bunch of witch hunters who will twist the facts in any way necessary to demonize our adversaries. I think the truth is frequently appalling enough. And when it's not, well, let's be happy our adversaries can be right sometimes.