The tax code subsidizes children but not support payments to parents or extended family

Evidence

And while there are certain tax breaks that come with having children—parents qualify for child tax credits and an increase in earned income tax credits—as John noted, payments to parents or anyone who doesn’t legally qualify as a dependent are not deductible because, as discussed in chapter 2, they are considered personal, family, and living expenses. The tax code subsidizes certain familial relationships, but not all. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 393

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• ADDENDUM: Reinforces the ‘Grafting & Growth’-adjacent theme of how structurally neutral frameworks privilege one form of relationship—though the strongest link is to Chapter 2’s own argument.
• XREF: Builds on the chapter-2 discussion of nondeductible personal and family expenses.

Related

• Large tax subsidies flow only to parent-child dependents, not support of elders. (similarity 0.90)