O.K. No Mom's have chimed in on this thread. So, because I read some of the comments as being quite inflammatory and biased I will add to the discussion.
As to the comments posted as follows by the initiator of this thread and attributed to Novaseeker: "CS payments are invisible from the tax perspective, which, in effect, means that the tax impact is terribly disproportionate. Dad doesn’t get any deduction for CS payments. They’re treated as if they were rent or gasoline (except they are not variable — you can’t reduce the cost as you can with rent or gasoline by moving or driving less). And Mom receives them tax free — these payments are not reported on her tax return and are generally invisible. And, as the original post points out, they are made with after-tax dollars, so the actual “effect on income” is much, much higher than 15% — i.e., it’s much more than 15% of the take-home pay of Dad. If Dad in example one has take home pay of, say 60k, 15k of that goes to CS, which is 25% of his take-home pay being transferred to his ex-wife on a tax-free basis to her on an ongoing basis. And, again, that doesn’t even take into account the health care premiums, the college savings account requirements, the life insurance premiums, and so on, that one is required to maintain in the typical decree. At the end of the day, this is a huge, huge wealth transfer from men to women, and it takes place on a completely unreported basis because, again, these payments don’t count for tax purposes, so they are not figured in Mom’s income. Flatly put, it’s a big, big scam, but if you complain about it, you’re instantly denigrated as a deadbeat supporting jackass who hates women and children. It’s a system that has been well designed by feminists to enslave men to their ex-wives, in practice."
It would appear that Federal and State taxes need to be paid on income. I presume that in order to prevent double taxation on the same earnings there are laws in place (Federal?) with regard to Child Support which dictate who pays the tax, payor or recipient. I also presume that the team put in place to construct the Kansas Child Support Guidelines is aware of the laws and considers them in the determination of total amount of money to be paid or received in Child Support. In other words, the tax point is mute (silent) and it does not matter. Federal tax law states that the income is not taxable to the recipient. If it were taxable to the recipient than it would be tax deductible to the payor.
Kansas can not change the Federal Tax Laws. It must consider them when making it's decisions.
Additionally. THIS IS NOT AN CONSIDERATION BETWEEN MOM's AND DAD's. IT is an issue of two parents or any party responsible for raising a child in the United States of America. It does not matter what sex the payor is or what sex the recipient is. This is Federal Law.
So, I also presume that if the tax responsibility shifted than the % of income due by the payor would also change. i.e. The if the payor gets to deduct the amount of Child Support paid from a Federal Tax return than the % of income paid to the recipient would increase to cover the estimated tax burden by the recipient. The current Federal laws make for much simpler calculations by the states because there is no need to estimate the Federal tax burden in the equation. This is because the State's goal is to create a net result where the amount of income to each party raising children to a level above what would qualify them for support benefits paid by the State of Federal Government for housing, food stamps and health care. Thus reducing the tax burden of it's residential population and businesses.
