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Tax Cuts And Jobs Act – House Bill Invokes The Culture War With Unborn Child Definition

A gift to an unborn child is considered a present gift and not a future gift. Here is a tax court decision from 1940 on point.

The term “life in being” is part of the Rule Against Perpetuities originally and has to do with the maximum term of a trust under common law. If the child is ventre sa mere (or in utero) at the time of the gift, then the child is “in being”. As Lord Chief Justice Willis (you remember him don’t you?) said:

” An infant en ventre sa mere, or in the mother’s womb, is supposed in law to be born, for many purposes. It is capable of having a legacy, or a surrender of a copyhold estate, made to it. It may have a guardian assigned to it, and it is enabled to have an estate limited to its use, and to take afterwards by such limitation, as if it were then actually born. And in this point the civil law agrees with ours.”

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Tax Cuts And Job Acts – Senate Bill Favors Jobs And Gigs

My tendency is to think that the traditional employer-employee relationship, much as I might mourn it, is doomed.  Arguably, its origin in the laws about masters and servants might mean that it will ultimately not be missed.  The dystopian nightmare would be that as inequality explodes, some form of indentured servitude will be instituted for people without property.  If you want to be really disturbed read Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters by George Fitzhugh which was published in 1857.

What is falsely called Free Society, is a very recent invention. It proposes to make the weak, ignorant and poor, free, by turning them loose in a world owned exclusively by the few (whom nature and education have made strong, and whom property has made stronger,) to get a living. In the fanciful state of nature, where property is unappropriated, the strong have no weapons but superior physical and mental power with which to oppress the weak. Their power of oppression is increased a thousand fold, when they become the exclusive owners of the earth and all the things thereon. They are masters without the obligations of masters, and the poor are slaves without the rights of slaves.

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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.