Children Need the IRS to End the Targeting of Adoptive Famlies

In the wake of the IRS scandal over targeting conservative and Christian organizations for audit (see the most recent USA Today story here), information is being exposed now to reveal that the federal government through the IRS was also working to actively challenge those who were making the herculean effort to provide a home and a family for a child who needed one.

 

Parents who chose to provide for needy children by building their families through adoption were targeted by the IRS for audit at a rate of 69-90%.  Audits of adoptive families occurred nearly 70% of the time, and 90% of returns claiming the adoption tax credit were targeted for requests for additional information to determine if an audit was in order.  Read the entire story by Rod Dreher of the American Conservative here.

The Taxpayer Advocate Service offers details about these facts and investigations at their website.   Of the audited adoptions, after an average of 126 days of investigation more than 55% ended with no evidence of flawed claims.  Those that merited changes were minor, as most claims on average were due a refund of less than $15,000, the amount of the federal tax credit for adoption.  (To learn more about this tax credit see our previous post on the law surrounding the Adoption Tax Credit).

The stress, cost, and emotional trauma that an IRS audit or inquiry carries was an added unnecessary burden on families that had already been experiencing those pressures in working to provide a home for a child.   This massive audit campaign yielded little income for the IRS while creating a severely damaging environment for future adoptive families. The result will only harm children who are in desperate need of homes.

Personal stories of adoptive families are chilling.  David French and his wife were one of the couples audited by the IRS because they adopted a child. Read their story published by the National Review here.  French explains, "As an adoptive family, it's sometimes difficult to describe the immense challenges in gathering paperwork, opening your lives to social workers for home studies, then expensive travel to sometimes-corrupt foreign locales to then launch a new life with a child you love immensely but who is also experiencing his or her own culture shock and adjustment. All of this places a great strain on family finances and emotions. To then face an audit on the other side? All so the IRS can collect a whopping 1 percent additional revenue? It's beyond the pale."

Family restoration of a broken world is reliant on adoption as a significant piece to the puzzle of providing for needy children.   The stamina, personal sacrifice, and love that the adoption process requires are enormous.  Harassment of these heroic adoptive families by government tax authorities for those good deeds is abhorrent, and extraordinarily destructive of the hope for a family that so many waiting children so urgently need.