Justice Samuel Alito was back in his skeptical mode today, chiding the Obama administration for — in his view — trying to have it both ways on whether the individual mandate penalty is a tax.

The same justice who shook his head at President Barack Obama during the 2010 State of the Union address, appearing to mouth the words “not true” when Obama criticized the Citizens United decision, gave Solicitor General Donald Verrilli a hard time Monday about the administration’s views on the mandate penalty:

JUSTICE ALITO: General Verrilli, today you are arguing that the penalty is not a tax. Tomorrow you are going to be back and you will be arguing that the penalty is a tax.

Has the Court ever held that something that is a tax for purposes of the taxing power under the Constitution is not a tax under the Anti-Injunction Act?

GENERAL VERRILLI: No, Justice Alito, but the Court has held in a license tax cases that something can be a constitutional exercise of the taxing power whether or not it is called a tax. And that's because the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct tomorrow is different from the nature of the inquiry that we will conduct today. Tomorrow the question is whether Congress has the authority under the taxing power to enact it and the form of words doesn't have a dispositive effect on that analysis. Today we are construing statutory text where the precise choice of words does have a dispositive effect on the analysis.