Posted on 04/18/2011 3:56:40 AM PDT by Locomotive Breath
This morning, when she kisses all five of her beautiful deductibles on the cheek, straps on their backpacks and nudges them out the door for the school bus, Thelma Ward will relax and wait for her reward in the mailbox - all $54,242.
Reason number 983219031890743047321 to replace the current income tax with a national retail sales tax.
Since when is shyness special needs?
How can Americans continue to tolerate this redistribution of wealth at the point of a gun?
Starting at the top, is not going to accomplish the goal. I would suggest that until you have a state legislature that believes we are on the fast track to financial disaster, and is willing to place itself and the state on the pinnacle of prominence by refusing federal black mail in the matter of paying X to receive Y from the federal benefactor, we are going to remain as slaves to our masters the Federal Government.
...and may I suggest it is going to probably get worse before it gets better, although I have to give some credit for the latest budget desires and suggestions, of the Republican US Congress. Desires and suggestions, that don’t have a chance of making it through the “democratically” controlled SENATE.
It appears the democrat party has a complete disconnect with the laws of economics, and is going to depend on the ignorance of the American people to continue the insanity that describes the actions of the Federal Government vis a vis the slaves of the fifty seven states of the United States of America.
“Since when is shyness special needs?”
When I see the term “special needs”, I think the child is truly disabled. Shyness? Speech therapy? A heart murmur? Little cash cows?
As far as I can tell, well beyond the point where the entire nation has collapsed into fiscal ruin. And maybe not even then.
Oh well. Who is John Galt?
This refund is not just for special needs adoptions, it is for any adoption. If you read the article, this couple is doing a noble thing, and money came without them expecting it. It will cause problems in the future, as people start to go into it just for the money.
The question about tax policy is a whole other issue, but few of us have the peinciples to turn down the money when the government offers to send us a check like that.
The tax credit for ordinary adoptions is also refundable, it's just that if it's a special-needs adoption the credit isn't required to be matched by qualified adoption expenses, among other things.
That is to say, for example, if you spent $10,000 on a non-special-needs adoption and you had $6,000 in income tax (after deducting the $10,000 in expenses from your taxable income) before the credit, you'd get a $4,000 income tax refund.
The change to a refundable credit was made for adoptions completed in 2010, and for adoption credit carry-forwards from 2005-2009.
The IRS defines "special needs":
A child is a child with special needs if all three of the following statements are true.The child was a citizen or resident of the United States or its possessions at the time the adoption effort began.
A state (including the District of Columbia) has determined that the child cannot or should not be returned to his or her parents' home.
The state has determined that the child will not be adopted unless assistance is provided to the adoptive parents. Factors used by states to make this determination include:
The child's ethnic background and age,
Whether the child is a member of a minority or sibling group, and
Whether the child has a medical condition or a physical, mental, or emotional handicap.
If you're irritated about a specific child's designation as "special needs," then you should focus on the state agency that made the determination, not the family who received the tax credit. That said, this is a very good thing for hard-to-place American children now stuck in foster care.
My wife and I benefited from the credit in 2006, when we brought our son home from Russia. The ~$11,000 credit meant that less than a quarter of the staggering expense of completing the adoption was offset by less than a year's worth of income taxes we'd paid prior to the tech bust, making a real difference in our financial picture and making it possible for us to complete the adoption with only substantial, not overwhelming, debt, and making it possible to survive eleven months of unemployment in 2008 somewhat unscathed.
If you want to see fewer MTV shows where the options for the pregnant teen are "keep or terminate," instead of "keep or adopt," then it must become easier for people to afford to adopt children.
The change to a refundable credit and more importantly, the increase in deductable expenses, may start to make the difference between my wife and I being able to afford another adoption as we had always planned before being hit by the unexpectedly crushing expense of the first one and my 20% salary cut once I finally landed another job in March 2009. We'll have to crunch some numbers.
Considering how much an adoption typically costs, not to mention raising a kid, I don't really see this scenario as particularly likely. Aside from that, adoptive parents are very closely scrutinized both before and after the adoption. And for most US adoptions, you basically have to petition the birth mother to choose you out of all the other parents interested in adopting her child in a high-stakes game of "Adoption Idol," with one judge.
Before you jump on me, let me say that I agree that the Fed Govt has no Constitutional mandate to be in the "Welfare" business. I'm for Constitutional and conservative right down the line.
But as long as my tax dollar is going to go somewhere, I'd rather it went to the Ward family than to Moochelle's burgeoning East Wing social events staff, the Pentagon's Gay Sensitivity Training program for our troops, or the tidy little skull crushers at Planned Barrenhood.
Why does it cost $40,000+ to adopt a child?
Government regulations, home inspections, interviews, etc.
All of this, in the not so distant past, was done by the church (100 years ago or so, I’d guess), or cousins/uncles/aunts of the ‘unwanted’ children.
Familial responsibility has dropped to an all-time low. Parents having no affection for each other divorce; parents have no affection for their kids murder them (infanticide in the womb, or outright murder); grown adults having no affection for their parents, putting them in group homes for someone else to take care of.
Government has become the ‘family unit’.
“But as long as my tax dollar is going to go somewhere, ...”
Begs a question.
Ours was a somewhat unusual situation, since the agency with which we were working folded like a house of cards about 3/4 of the way through the process while stringing us along for most of 2005.
Oh yes, I know!
I’m not concerned about people going into it for the money with domestic infant adoptions and international adoptions. I’m talking about what I’ve already seen in domestic foster care. There are many good foster parents, but a few go into it for the $600/month payment per child. If you adopt a hard to place child, the payment continues until they are 18 and all adoption expenses are covered by the state. Add a $13,000 tax payment up front, it’s a situation ripe for abuse.
I know there is a lot of scrutiny, but I also know that the need for foster parents can sometimes get desperate. Perhaps this will increase the supply of available adoptive parents so that fewer scammers get put into use.
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