It may sound callous, but the parents of that baby get to take a tax deduction, too.

There was no affirmation and no lovely meaning, nor any cruelty to a $50 tax for a baby alive for one hour, it was merely a hiccup where the regular tax policy met the messy reality of life. The law does not plan for 1 hour long infants because they are blessedly rare.

What I do hope is that doctors ensured that Olivia did not have the capacity to suffer for that one hour she was alive. I can understand the emotional need of the family, but dying of slow suffocation must be truly terrible. Hopefully appropriate drugs were administered to make this as painless as possible for the baby.

Hey, your baby died. That will be fifty dollars.

When any social artifice supersedes basic human empathy it becomes an enemy of humanity. All society is personal because it's run by and for people. Pretending otherwise is the root of oppression.

(Yeah, I don't know what I'm talking about, I just thought I'd have a go at being clever. Cheers)

Also, I wouldn't mind lasting 113 years so long as my senses stay sharp and I can still get a good joke.

Whether we're here for an hour or one hundred years, it's all really just a blink of an eye. Make the most of it.

"Every time I turn around the county appears to be nickel and diming us, putting a tax on this and a tax on that. Where does it end?" said Larry

It's a death tax. Pay it off, that's the end of the taxes on the tyke. Then all you have to deal with is the hospital bills. If only they were a mere $50.

You want to have a kid for free, homebirth it yourself, and bury it quietly out back if it goes wrong after an hour. Or go live in the sticks, not in a city.

And yeah, you better not be thinking of taking any tax deductions on the late stillbirth if you don't want to pay the death tax.

So, yeah, my heart goes out to the parents.

As for the grandparents: shame on them. First of all, this seems like a thinly veiled political attack against "nickel-and-diming" King County using a dead grandchild. Also, why is this coming from residents of Yakima County--or do the grandparents live in King? Second, yeah, it's unfortunate that there's really no human element in charging that death tax. Seems this is the way the system works though in many aspects. Third, and most important, you're granddaughter just died but you want to use that event and waste your precious life complaining/grandstanding about a 50 bucks on KING? Isn't there a better use of your time?

Fish Wrench, I'll see your Mudedeism, and raise you one:

"A tax imposed by the State on a brief moment of life is an affirmation of that life, and reminds the parents that their brief moment of joy 9 months ago is worthy of recognition by something larger than themselves."

*eh, "your granddaughter" sorry

I guess the way I look at the "death tax" story is this: "You just had a mother go through nine months of pregnancy and then your daughter died in an hour and you're pissed off over a $50 charge?!"

I found this post to be beautiful and moving. Tax or no tax.

@1 is correct, the parents will get a full exemption on federal taxes for a dependent for that hour of life. That is substantially more than 50 bucks. All deaths that occur within 24 hours of admission to any Washington State Hospital must be reviewed by the Medical Examiner's office, it's the law. The charge of $50.00 is much less than actual cost, so we see here a Tea Party style chance to improve the state budget by charging the actual cost of autopsy and review. After all, why should the public subsidize private grief? The state should out-source the review to a large for-profit corporation and let market forces decide the cost of infant death. Also, the dependent exemption should be pro-rated to the exact length of time the dependent is alive.(sarcasm).

Whatever at least Tom Brady and the Pats are out. Seeya Pats.

Oops wrong thread.

WTF are you talking about? A number on a piece of paper does not make a person real. Her existence did. That's ludicrous. Who told you this was true? Her family acknowledged her life and that's all that fucking matters. She will never be "an American" nor a "Washingtonian." She landed here through no choice of her own, and never signed any kind of contract, social or real.

Maybe the parents can tell the government to get her taxes from the dead baby. And I highly doubt her tax bill is a dependent on her parents' IRS forms.

Death and taxes.

charles, some of your posts make me wish there was a "like" button on slog.

nice.

@8 The state is tiny. It may serve or oppress multitudes, but exists in microscopy and electric charges in the brains of it's subjects. If we delude ourselves that a state exists outside of our choices, we have enslaved ourselves to our imagination rather than our ethics and morality. Imagination can create dreams, or nightmares.

In a truly human state, the tax collector would have waived the tax without mentioning it, their supervisor would have agreed, and then both would have expressed condolences to the family with a nice card on recycled paper.

All funeral charges and death taxes are cruel. If you have ever had a loved one die, and then had to go try to buy all the stuff it seems we need to die (casket, headstone, etc etc) it seems horribly cruel to make you worry about such worldly thing when grieving. Even having to have a funeral in the first place seems unmanageable.

However, them's the breaks. Having someone you love die is hard. Unfortunately, the world doesn't stop. And the "tax collector" doesn't waive taxes for people experiencing profound tragedy. Tragedy is all too common, especially the personal variety.

Life, life indeed. I am grieving for a dear loved one right now gone far too young. Great post.

@18 I fold.

"The tax should not be seen as cruel but as an assertion of her existence, a registration of her citizenship and participation in this great and globalizing society."

Beautiful. That's a healthy and wonderful way to look at an ill-applied tax.

I got a kick out of Fish Wrench's comments, too.

Imagine if the little girl had been audited, then she really would have meant something!

Here are a few more lucky "universal subjects" who get to "participate in this great and globalizing society."

http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/rawagall…

This is what happens to human beings when they are considered to be anything other than human beings.

Well, legally you can't 'die' unless you've been 'born'. I have no problem with a $50 abortion tax. Like births, those things aren't free. I'm also for a tax deduction for having an abortion. A really big one.

In my perfect world, the tax is paid by the biological father, and the deduction is taken by the mother-not-to-be.

@27 You're a fucking comedian or delusional. Either way, you're entertaining. cheers.

@27, An abortion tax would be fine with me IF you accept that tax-payer money can then go to support abortions, which I am sure you'd have a problem with.