Step Child

[Gretel]

In an earlier thread about injured spouse, Burton gave me quite a good explanation and also brought the step child to my attention.

That kept my brain spinning. If unmarried people (both parents of child), who once lived together and are now separated, can go by the rules of divorced parents why does this not apply not unmarried people and the child is only the child of one of them.

So, boyfriend moves in with girlfriend and her child. Girlfriend doesn't work and boyfriend wants to claim child. He should be able to treat it as step child. Do I try to bring in too much logic here?

I am sure some people now will through codes and regulations. So be careful.

[jainen]

too much for me

>>Do I try to bring in too much logic here?<<

Too much for me, because I can't follow your logic. Unmarried parents have similar but not all the same rules as divorced, but the real issue in claiming children is that they they are parents regardless of marital status. In some other tax issues that involve marital status but not children, the rules are very different for unmarried.

A stepchild is the son or daughter of a spouse. Can't help it, that's the definition--no spouse, no step. We might get there. Family relationships are changing all the time. We already have domestic partners, same-sex marriages, Catholic annulments, consenting adults, "eligible" foster children, qualifying relatives. Now that Heather has two mommies, we need to expand our vocabulary, no doubt about it.

Don't you think we should be allowed to sell and trade tax exemptions, like ration coupons or housing development permits? Kids don't need a family relationship, and even if they do it's no business of the government.

[Gretel]

Maybe we should do away with "relationships" alltogether instead of adding more confusing terms.

Let's simplefy the requirements for claiming anyone: spouse, child, two to three wives or husbands for that matter, best friend, .... Anyone providing more than half of support of another person can claim him as dependent. End of story.

Of course that will give all kinds of peoples recourse to your financial situation since now they want to be sure they are the ones supporting you (whoever you are).

[Koss]

Non-statutory families

Jainen proposed that the term nonstatutory family be used to refer to the somewhat frequent scenario that we encounter, which I have sometimes called the “unmarried-couple-kids-are-hers-but-not-his.”

I agree with Jainen that the children are not his stepchildren, because the definition of stepchild, in the relevant sections of the tax law, revolves around marriage. If they are not married, the stepchild relation does not arise.

Jainen and I disagree over when and how the qualifying child relation can arise. I believe that there is a reasonable interpretation of the law in which a woman who is herself a dependent of her boyfriend cannot have any qualifying children. Whether her income is zero or some number under $3200 can have a significant impact on how this issue is argued.

The claim that the child is somehow her qualifying child even when she has zero income, thereby barring him from claiming the child as a qualifying relative, involves reasoning that leads to certain bizarre results, such as twin brothers who live with their cousin and no one else. The two children are somehow said to be qualifying children of each other, even if they are each four years old with zero income, and this prevents the adult cousin who is caring for them and supporting them from claiming them as dependent qualifying relatives.

The claim that I reject is that the mere presence in the household of a closer blood relative somehow has an impact even when that person is not eligible for any of the benefits associated with a qualifying child.

The problem is that most of this is about EIC, and to a lesser degree, the refundable additional child tax credit. People have come to see these credits as an entitlement, or some sort of welfare benefit. And in a way that’s what these credits are. A young woman on her own, earning $20,000 as a fast food manager, has a tax liability of about $1400. But if she takes a different path in life, and becomes a single mother of two children, and you hold all other variables constant, keeping the father out of the picture, this same young woman now has zero tax liability, and she gets a check from the IRS for about $4500. This is redistribution of wealth, pure and simple. I’m not judging it. I’m simply identifying it.

The idea that EIC is some sort of government aid for poor people (which it is) has created a mentality in which people begin to feel that the tax benefits of having dependent children should somehow be determined not on an individual basis, but rather on the basis of all members of the household, even if some are not working.

Anyone who has ever applied for food stamps understands this perfectly. If you tell your caseworker truthfully that you are living with and are supported by your boyfriend or your mother, your application for food stamps will require information about their income. The entire household is evaluated as a unit.

Similarly, a college student applying for financial aid must report his parents’ income on the application if he can be claimed as their dependent. That’s can be, not is. (Memo to Bill Clinton re: definition of is.)

It is this idea that is facilitating the assertion that a child is the qualifying child of a woman with no income, who cannot possibly be eligible for any of the benefits of having a qualifying child.

But the most widely accepted construction of the UDC rules produces perverse outcomes. I don’t think this is what Congress intended, and I believe there are other readings of the law with more rational outcomes.

Burton