Poll of the Day > Georgia to allow fetus with a heartbeat to be claimed on taxes as dependent

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/georgia-to-allow-people-to-claim-unborn-children-as-dependents

What do you think

To just copy my thoughts from where Lok shared this in a different topic (since this is an interesting enough subject that giving it its own discussion makes sense):

As that one lawyer [in Lok's link] mentioned, I 100% expect that to result in adding tax fraud charges to the criminal investigations associated with every miscarriage, which just makes the whole experience worse. That's just a performative gesture that will not only cost the state a pretty substantial amount of tax revenue, but a significant amount of additional costs associated with verifying the pregnancy, investigating miscarriages, and jailing people for the crime of not being able to prove that their miscarriage was accidental enough. Very few citizens are likely to see an appreciable net benefit from the extra 7-8 months of claiming a dependent, especially where doctors will have to charge them for the administrative costs of sending the state verification of the pregnancy. This purely amounts to "look at how logically consistent we are!"

Ironically, with a proper health care system that streamlined that administration (mostly with a unified electronic medical record system that could update the state on the mother's pregnancy status with a single click, if the mother consented to it) and ensured expectant mothers had regular prenatal appointments (so any changes were documented and could be reported promptly), as well as abortions being legal and not requiring a criminal investigation, this idea could be very helpful for those preparing for parenthood. Without decent health care and with restrictive anti-abortion laws, though, it's just going to be too many legal loopholes and additional costs for most of the parents that actually need that help to take advantage of it. Most of them are going to either slip through the cracks or end up in jail.

I did wonder how they would navigate a miscarriage.

I'm pretty comfortable assuming that the answer is "however makes things worst for the victims," given how any laws around abortion tend to go.

Conceptually, I'd expect it to go how I believe claiming multicellular children works: If you claim a kid as a dependent, and that kid dies, you can only claim them up to the date of their death. Similarly, I'd guess this just moves the date on which you can start the claim back by 7-8 months, then if you miscarry, you can't claim anymore after the miscarriage date. That seems reasonable enough. In practice, because that effectively amounts to the government paying women to be pregnant for a couple months, I expect there will be extra scrutiny added to prevent people from intentionally miscarrying so they can get a few bucks from the government without having to deliver the kid. Given the extent to which people making this sort of law tend to think being pregnant is a trivial experience, I'd also expect they'd just want the money back because they don't think any parenting costs have been incurred (especially if fathers are also able to claim this credit).

adjl posted...

I'm pretty comfortable assuming that the answer is "however makes things worst for the victims," given how any laws around abortion tend to go.

Yeah I was assuming obviously whatever way will punish the woman

Pretty stupid, fetuses aren't babies.
It's a blatant Trojan Horse to get the left to accept it and implicitly agree that fetuses are human life once they have a heart beat (and thus aborting them is murder), but apparently a small bribe is all it takes for many of them to give up their rights.

You need a name and a SSN. How would this even work?

adjl posted...

I'm pretty comfortable assuming that the answer is "however makes things worst for the victims," given how any laws around abortion tend to go.

Conceptually, I'd expect it to go how I believe claiming multicellular children works: If you claim a kid as a dependent, and that kid dies, you can only claim them up to the date of their death. Similarly, I'd guess this just moves the date on which you can start the claim back by 7-8 months, then if you miscarry, you can't claim anymore after the miscarriage date. That seems reasonable enough. In practice, because that effectively amounts to the government paying women to be pregnant for a couple months, I expect there will be extra scrutiny added to prevent people from intentionally miscarrying so they can get a few bucks from the government without having to deliver the kid. Given the extent to which people making this sort of law tend to think being pregnant is a trivial experience, I'd also expect they'd just want the money back because they don't think any parenting costs have been incurred (especially if fathers are also able to claim this credit).

You can claim the fetus as a dependency after you give birth, then you get a tax refund for those 9 months of pregnancy.

DrPrimemaster posted...

You can claim the fetus as a dependency after you give birth, then you get a tax refund for those 9 months of pregnancy.

That would also work, while avoiding providing any sort of benefit to those that failed to bring a pregnancy to term for whatever reason (since these people don't value women beyond a hole to bone unless they're reproducing).

This is nonsense to me but it is Georgia and the South in general overall have the most poverty and the most uneducated people yet somehow the South plays a prominent role in matters facing the country.

BUMPED2002 posted...

This is nonsense to me but it is Georgia and the South in general overall have the most poverty and the most uneducated people yet somehow the South plays a prominent role in matters facing the country.

The Southeastern states take the most welfare dollars while railing the most against social welfare programs lol. It's crazy how people can bite the hand that feeds them and then complain.

Jen0125 posted...

The Southeastern states take the most welfare dollars while railing the most against social welfare programs lol. It's crazy how people can bite the hand that feeds them and then complain.

It's projection, the Gaslight-Obstruct-Project party's specialty. Accuse the other side of exactly what you're doing or your own moral failings to try and distract away from people calling you out on it. If you accuse them first, then they say the same about you, they're just "parroting" your talking point, logic and proof be damned.
It's infuriating, but unfortunately it seems to work on a lot of people and the news media lets them get away with it.

How much money are they giving to the fetus?
Can they provide receipts?

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

How much money are they giving to the fetus?

It varies from pregnancy to pregnancy, but prenatal appointments aren't cheap, food budgets usually have to go up a bit because growing a human takes quite a bit of extra energy, and there are usually quite a few costs associated with preparing a household for a baby that happen before the baby is actually born. It is actually fairly sensible to treat a pregnancy as a financial dependent, even if this particular example is just a matter of Georgia virtue signalling for the pro-lifers and not genuinely trying to help anyone.

SKARDAVNELNATE posted...

Can they provide receipts?

Receipts aren't needed to claim a child as a dependent, so I wouldn't expect them to be required to claim a fetus in the same way. There are specific tax credits that are related to children that might require receipts, and in the same vein there could be specific tax credits to help with complicated pregnancies that would require some sort of proof of those complications and associated costs, but the more general process of claiming a dependent wouldn't fall into that.

If you have a miscarriage do you have to give the money back? Or do you only get a tax credit for part of the year?

Conner4REAL posted...

If you have a miscarriage do you have to give the money back? Or do you only get a tax credit for part of the year?

Prob go to jail for tax fraud

Jen0125 posted...

Prob go to jail for tax fraud

And probably murder too