wolit@alice.UUCP (Jan Wolitzky) (04/03/85)
As many of us have, I've been thinking lately of ways to convince the Internal Revenue Service to allow me to hold on to a few more of my hard-earned dollars. My thoughts have been a bit distracted, though, by all the news reports of violent protests and terrorist bombings at family planning centers around the country. Necessity, as often, being the mother of invention, this situation has driven me to its own solution, to wit, a healthy tax break for me, and an end to all this bickering about what is or isn't life for the rest of society. The elegance of the solution lies in its simplicity. The IRS, of course, allows you to claim your children as dependents. You get a nice, big personal exemption for each nice, little one, and a lower tax rate the more you have, to boot. Even if the happy event happens to fall on December 31st, you get the tax benefits of having the child around all year, without all the extra diapers. The feds smile on parenthood even in tragedy: if your child should die after its first breath, you still get the tax breaks. Now even though I personally have no children, I'd be crazy to campaign against Motherhood (or Fatherhood) in this country, so I'm going to lobby for a special-interest group of which I'm not even a member, and support retention of this policy. The kicker is that, while my wife and I went through 1984 unaccompanied by the pitter-patter of little feet, we did make some progress in that direction (twice, in fact, but a miscarriage cut short her first pregnancy). It suddenly dawned on me the other day that if the administration in Washington wants to treat an embryo as a human life, then part of that treatment ought to be the same tax status enjoyed by any other offspring. By the reasoning of Reagan, Falwell, et. al., we should get to claim two additional dependents on the old 1040 this year! You see, the big snag in the abortion debate up til now has been over exactly when the developing embryo should be considered a human being. Those on the far right claim the moment of conception, those on the far left the moment of birth, but for most of those in the middle, the argument has fallen into the muddle of medical hair-splitting, with no dearth of expert testimony for or against any particular position. As long as we allow the question to hinge on such a messy, controversial point, neither side will be satisfied with the result. Fortunately, tax laws do not rest on such shaky ground. The IRS rules supreme, and if they rule that your three-martini lunch is or is not deductible, no amount of appeal on its nutritional merits will avail. I think the same case can be made for the question of life itself (after all, nothing is certain but death and you-know-what). If they won't let me take an exemption for my unborn children, why, that must mean that they're not really children. On the other hand, if the government wants to count fetuses as constituents, it's only consistent to let their parents claim them as dependents. We've been barking up the wrong tree all along. The crucial point in this whole debate is not, after all, viability, but deductibility! Feeling a bit like the characters in Douglas Adams' "Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy," anxiously awaiting an answer from a computer to the question, "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?," I am eager to hear what the IRS decides. -- Jan Wolitzky, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ; (201) 582-2998 (Affiliation given for identification purposes only)
pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc) (04/08/85)
Hmm. What if we adopted a "flat tax" proposal that did away with deductions for dependants. Would that mean the dependants (born or not) are not human? -- Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd
mcal@ihuxb.UUCP (Mike Clifford) (04/09/85)
> Hmm. What if we adopted a "flat tax" proposal that did away > with deductions for dependants. Would that mean the dependants > (born or not) are not human? > -- > > Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd No, of course not. It would simply mean that couples would not get a tax break for having children.
mcal@ihuxb.UUCP (Mike Clifford) (04/09/85)
> Hmm. What if we adopted a "flat tax" proposal that did away > with deductions for dependants. Would that mean the dependants > (born or not) are not human? > -- > > Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd That's right, Paul! And those who don't qualify to pay federal taxes have been considered unhuman for years! Sheesh!
goldman@umn-cs.UUCP (Matthew D. Goldman ) (04/24/85)
In article <978@ihuxb.UUCP> mcal@ihuxb.UUCP (Mike Clifford) writes: >> Hmm. What if we adopted a "flat tax" proposal that did away >> with deductions for dependants. Would that mean the dependants >> (born or not) are not human? >> -- >> >> Paul Dubuc cbscc!pmd > > >No, of course not. It would simply mean that couples would not get >a tax break for having children. No, it means that it is 'open season' on people who don't pay their taxes. ;-) Matthew Goldman ihnp4!stolaf!umn-cs!goldman Home is where you take off your hat... Banzai!