Whoever is claiming them gets the exemption , but what people seem to forget in these conversations is that there isn’t an exemption for a child- there is an exemption for a dependent. There’s a slight difference between the rules for a dependent child and one for a dependent relative ( and most kids will qualify under the rules for relatives), but if one person can claim an exemption for a spouse living in the same household who doesn’t earn income and another for his mother who lives with him, who doesn’t earn an income and whom he supports , I don’t see why a third shouldn’t get the same exemption for his child who lives with him, doesn’t earn an income and whom he supports.
No, but Thudlow Boink was talking about how many people the income on the tax return is supporting. If I earn X dollars per year and can only claim an exemption for myself, I will pay more in taxes than if that same income is supporting both myself and my husband. If I am supporting my husband, my mother and myself on that same income, my taxes will be lower still.
(which by the way, is my understanding of the reason for dependent exemptions- not to encourage procreation, but to account for the fact that a two person household is not in the same financial situation as a single person household with the same income)
Because having a population that can read and write will be an advantage. Further, as American public schools pursue the Arnoldian ideal and provide a humane education in the classical sense they will turn out thoughtful, gracious, polite future citizens who are exemplars of civil discourse and the examined life.
A small price for society to pay.
It isn’t worth much to me, but for someone making $20k a year, $540 in a tax break is a lot of money - once you HAVE kids. $540 a year in a tax break probably isn’t going to make people think “wow! we should have more kids.” It makes it EASIER to raise kids when you are working poor - it doesn’t make it profitable.
Likewise, when you want kids, saying “well, the government is only going to give me a max of $1200 a year for them” isn’t exactly pushing you towards childlessness.
(If we want to go for unfair, why do we deduct exemptions from the INCOME, making them worth more to people who make more? - if it were fair, it would be at tax credit - everyone gets a $500 break).
Most taxpayers went to public schools themselves, though. And your children will grow up to be taxpayers.
In fact, the great majority of taxpayers pay for a public school system they themselves use for about the same amount of time. Granted, some people never become taxpayers, but then, their use of the school system tends to be proportional to the likelihood they will pay tax. And some people who immigrate in after their schooling years will pay the tax without using the system themselves, but that seems a fair price to pay for the privilege of being allowed to immigrate. For the most part, though, every user pays when they get out of school and get a job. It seems pretty fair to me.
But, to springboard off Doreen’s excellent post, what you are proposing is trying to stop people from breeding–or at least, serving as a dis-incentive. All dependents get a deduction if you pay for over 50% of their support. If you don’t pay for their support–they pay for themselves–then THEY get the deduction. But every single body in America counts as somebody’s deduction. Putting third or fifth or tenth kids in a special category is actively discouraging people from breeding.
I mean, by your logic, could a 16 year old fifth child who had a job claim themselves? When does their second-class citizenship wear off? If they quit their job when they start college and are now 18, can their parents start claiming them, or do they go back to not counting?
Having children is not a ‘life choice’ in the manner of wearing plaid pants, playing golf, or eating sushi. It’s the fundamental thing that has to happen for society to survive, and consequently a large part of what all successful societies focus on.
Besides which, if you think it’s not the government’s role to subsidize things, why not complain about subsidies for ethanol, or for home ownership, or for the oil industry?
Though for most Americans, adoption happens mostly out of pocket. Childbirth is insured. So while you get a tax break for adopting (and only if you don’t make too much money), its usually still WAY cheaper out of pocket to have a bio child.
(I’m both a bio parent and an adoptive parent. I don’t like the adoption tax credit. Giving middle class parents a tax break to adopt healthy Chinese girls doesn’t seem like its doing anything but pandering. Tax breaks to take on kids that are wards of the state - sure.)
Again, every citizen is given an opportunity to attend public school. Every citizen then pays taxes. Their payment towards the public school system is made at a different time - since children make lousy taxpayers - but in fact it’s mostly one user, one payer. We have all kinds of systems whereby you pay tax at a different time than the time you earn the benefits - Social Security and old age pensions are an obvious example where you pay years before you get the benefit. In the case of public schools, you pay AFTER you get the benefit.
Did you go to public school? I did. So did most people. Public school is offered to every resident. So now I’m paying tax for kids to go to school, but it’s just as logical to state that I’m paying for ME having using public schools.
I have no problem paying for public schools. Neither does the OP. We are all better off because people can read (and do math, and know some basic science, history, etc.). Why do people keep harping on the public school thing, as if anyone had a problem with it?
I didn’t say you did or did not have a problem with it. What I am objecting to is the notion that people without children are subsidizing people with them.
That just doesn’t make a lot of sense, because it ignores the fungible nature of money; it’s far more logical to state that every taxpayer is paying for their own public school education. If that taxpayer then has six kids, we have to pay for that now, but that also produces six more taxpayers, who will pay when their time comes.
I don’t buy this line of argument. Having kids is one of many requirements for society to survive. We also need to farm, build roads, mine fuel, etc.
The idea that you can pick one of those things and say that it’s somehow most important because without it society would perish is a non-starter. Without any of the things listed we’d devolve into a mass of agony and famine, but that doesn’t mean that it makes sense to provide a subsidy for that behavior. Particularly when we’re not particularly lacking it. Society somehow managed to perpetuate itself for millenia before the income tax child exemption was established, and I’m sure it would continue to do so in the absence of one.
That said, I have no problem with the concept of an income tax system where part of the calculation for tax paid is how many people that income is supporting. But, out of a sense of fairness, not because we need to reward people monetarily for having children.
Subsidized, unfortunately. People who mine fuel make money at it, unlike parents (neglecting Lindsay Lohan’s father. )
Society back then didn’t have income tax. And poor people had lots of kids both to support them when they were old and because they expected a lot of them would die.
But that is exactly what the exemption does - it puts a small amount of taxable income, needed to stay alive for each person, out of the range of the taxman. It is also progressive, as has been hinted at. Our youngest is no longer a dependent, but the slight increase in taxes from that was in the noise. Someone making a lot less gets a lot more relative benefit from it. Which is good.
A lot of countries in Europe gave substantial benefits for kids at one time, I’m not sure it is still true. Here, anyone thinking he or she will profit from the exemption versus the cost of a kid is a blockhead.
The tax break for children is NOT an incentive to have more children.
The income tax code for good or ill tries to tax those who can best bear the burden of the tax, so we tax the poor less than we tax the rich. We recognize that family with 3 children and an invalid grandparent can pay less in taxes than a single woman with the same income so we tax them differently.
Now that your kids are out of the house, you can afford more in taxes than you used to so we charge you more.
The issue of public education is an entirely different matter. I think its pretty well established that society benefits from a well educated populace.
The drive to procreate is sufficient to ensure procreation without tax incentives. I’ve heard of people having induced delivery on December 31 for tax reasons but I have never heard of someone having a child for the tax deduction.
Crops, roads, and fuel are resources that we harvest, build, or mine in order to support our society. Children are not a resource that we harvest to support our society. Children are society. To me, it’s comparing children to crops are anything else that’s a non-starter, because it’s plain that all aspects of the success of our society in the long term depend on having children first and foremost. Raising children has to be the first priority or else everything will be falling apart in a generation. Roads and fuel and so forth are important but are nonetheless secondary priorities underneath child-rearing.
What does paying for schools have to do with tax credits for parents? Those tax credits don’t go to the schools, they go to the parents. That’s what Snowboarder Bo meant when he said the childless subsidize those with children.
Bo isn’t subsidizing my children. I have to report their income. And their income tax is higher than their exemption. So he doesn’t need to worry about mine.
woodstockbirdybird understood what I meant, but I’m not sure you’re argument about your kids’ income is correct. How old are your children? Were they making an income at, say, 0-16 years old?
Even if yours were, most children under the age of 16 aren’t making any taxable income at all, and so childless people are paying more taxes that build roads, schools, and all the other things that taxes pay for that benefit a family that gets a tax break.
In other words, childless people are subsidizing families with children, and other than the vague notion that society as a whole will be better at some point in the future (i.e., when the kids are grown up, functioning adults), there’s really no guaranteed benefit at all for the childless, but plenty of immediate (and hopefully future) benefit for the family with children.
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