As is stands, parents are able to claim their children as dependents on their tax returns, which lowers their overall tax liability and in effect means that the parents either pay less in taxes or receive a higher return at the end of each year.
Until they reach the age at which they can work, children are a drain on society. They receive public schooling and receive the same benefit from public services that adults do, yet they contribute nothing in return. At the point that they reach maturity and are gainfully employed and paying taxes, they become a functioning member of society.
If a parent decides to have a child, they are making a conscious decision to produce another human being. They could choose to get a sterilization surgery, use birth control, or abort the pregnancy (assuming they don’t live in a backwards state that’s banned it). Yet even if they decide to have 15 children, the rest of society has to foot the bill for their poor decisions until the child reaches adulthood.
By increasing taxes on parents instead of reducing them, you not only incentivize safe sex and abortion, but you shift the burden of raising a child solely to the individuals who are responsible for the fact that that child exists.
I am a strong advocate for social programs: Single-payer healthcare, welfare programs, low-income housing, etc, but for adults who in turn contribute what they can. A child should only be supported by the individuals who created it.
Take money from the very people who would be spending that money?
That just adds overhead without spreading the costs around.
Just the elimination of parent tax credits would create so much tax revenue that it’d cover those costs 10 fold and that’s not even accounting for the new taxes. Plus fewer people would become parents as a result of this policy so it would help non-parents too. Contraceptives help everyone, not just those trying to avoid pregnancy
Again, no comment on OOP, just saying this isn’t really a problem with their opinion
Wait, so you want to tax parents to pay for everyone’s contraceptives instead of it just being spread around the general population? That is even dumber.
You do understand that society benefits from younger folks, and barriers to having children will encourage a country to end up like Japan with an aging population that can’t be supported by a younger workforce?