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- <text id=91TT0402>
- <title>
- Feb. 25, 1991: Business Notes:Taxes
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Feb. 25, 1991 Beginning Of The End
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 67
- Business Notes
- TAXES
- Is This Kid For Real?
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Honesty is the best policy--especially when you have no
- alternative. That would seem to be the conclusion of millions
- of U.S. taxpayers. In 1988, 8.7 million of them claimed a tax
- credit for child-care expenses, but in 1989 only 6 million did
- so. Could it be that in just a year 2.7 million taxpayers
- stopped paying for child care? Not likely. A better
- explanation: in the interim a law took effect requiring parents
- who claimed such tax breaks to identify their day-care
- providers. Suddenly, if the IRS wanted to check out your claim,
- it could.
- </p>
- <p> "We are fairly certain that there was a major impact because
- of this new provision of the law," says an IRS spokesman,
- politely sidestepping the more pointed conclusion that some
- children previously cited as dependents existed only in the
- imagination of resourceful 1040 filers. Estimated windfall to
- the U.S. Treasury from the stricter rule: more than $1.2
- billion.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-