Posted on 01/23/2015 10:31:34 AM PST by Citizen Zed
President Obama’s proposal to expand a tax break for working parents with children under 5 has some conservatives criticizing it for discriminating against stay-at-home parents.
Those parents wouldn’t be able to take the proposed tax credit equal to 50 percent of child care expenses, up to a maximum of $3,000 per child. What the critics fail to see is that the playing field wasn’t level to begin with. The tax code is already hugely distorted in favor of stay-at-home parenting: Labor outside the home is taxed; household work, such as stay-at-home parenting, is not.
I realize that sounds like a bizarre thing to say. Why would there be a tax on parenting, and why would the lack of such a tax constitute a tax preference? But productive activities within the home are not especially different from the taxable work we do outside the home. We labor, and instead of receiving a cash wage, we receive something else we value: a clean house or a mowed lawn or a well-behaved child.
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.nytimes.com ...
>>Labor outside the home is taxed; household work, such as stay-at-home parenting, is not.<<
stay-at-home parenting is unpaid.
What an idiot.
“What the critics fail to see is ..... The tax code is already hugely distorted in favor of stay-at-home parenting: Labor outside the home is taxed; household work, such as stay-at-home parenting, is not.”
This person needs to find some farm animal that doesn’t really need its brain any more and transplant it into his skull cavity. I am sure that one or more stupider statements has been made since the dawn of mankind’s use of language, but this is close to the paradigm. Or nadirdigm.
Wait a minute, do these morons want to tax stay-at-home parenting?
Go eff yourselves, NYT.
I love having a gay Harvard grad give opinions on family life.
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Uh... yes... it's called social security. Go have some kinds so the rest of us can retire easily, freeloader.
Of course liberals prefer to have an increase in demand for public services by slackers by paying people to do nothing.
Kids, not kinds.
So the theory is that if you work outside the home, you don’t do any household work, right?
Let’s have an additional $3,000 tax break per child who is homeschooled.
“Barro describes himself as Republican, but has expressed opposition to many policies of the current Republican Party. He has written that elites ‘are usually elite for good reason, and have better judgment than the average person.’ He has been described by others as conservative, liberal, and libertarian. Barro lives in Queens, New York. He is gay and has written in support of same-sex marriage. Barro is also an atheist.” —from Wikipedia
I won my bet with myself that this idiot has neither a wife nor children. I’m also willing to bet he puts himself in the “elite” category.
Incorrect. Income is taxed, not labor. There are hundreds of forms of "labor" I can do outside the home with no taxible consequences.
My jaw just drops when I read statements like this. What's next? If you go on vacation, the time you spend sitting on the beach is subject to a luxury tax? The reductio ad absurdum is that everything you do should be subject to tax and thus, you should not have any money and simply exist by having the government provide things for you.
I know, I was just thinking....is this like saying “pay is taxed, lack of pay is not taxed” ?????
Based on this idiot’s view, all the millions of unemployed who stay home and don’t earn a living should pay taxes on their unpaid labor.
By that logic, everyone who is on welfare and staying home should be taxed because of their un-taxed benefit to their families. Every housewife could be taxed, as could any person living at home providing unpaid care to a parent.
These are the same idiots who supported Clinton’s, Bubba’s, of taxing individuals for the imputed value of the rent they don’t pay on their owned homes.
When it comes to that, I will pay mine in copper and lead.
Prostitution isn’t taxed in this country either.
For later
Absolutely: its not the labor that is taxed, its the income.
No need to read more...
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