Via Paul Caron,
the Wall Street Journal ran an article on Wednesday, GETTING PERSONAL:
Tax Code Lags Growing Body-Parts Market (subscribers only). The article begins:
Organs and blood products, eggs, sperm, breast milk and other
goods from the human body are bought and sold in a market that has burgeoned
over the past two decades. The tax code hasn't kept up.
The article goes on to discuss recent articles by Lisa Milot
(GA), What
Are We – Laborers, Factories, or Spare Parts? The Tax Treatment of Transfers of
Human Body Materials and Bridget Crawford (Pace), Taxing
Surrogacy.
As regular Lounge readers are aware, issues relating to commodification
of the body are some of my favorites.
See, for example, Sunny
Samaritans and Egomaniacs: Price-Fixing in the Gamete Market (egg and
sperm markets), Altruism and
Intermediation in the Market for Babies (babies, ivf, egg, sperm, and
surrogacy markets).
Although I’m certainly no tax expert, the tax issues
governing these types of trades strike me as some of the more interesting and
important issues to grapple with going forward.
Prior related posts:
Is
the Ban on Selling Bone Marrow Unconstitutional?
Bone
Marrow Suit
Selecting
for Sex: US entrepreneurship in the baby market
New
York Suit Seeks To Block Payments For Oocytes Used In Stem Cell Research
Celebrity
Look-Alike Sperm Sale
Taboo
Trades and Forbidden Markets
U.K.
To Reconsider Payments to Egg and Sperm Donors
See
Me, Feel Me, Touch Me, Tax Me
A
New Meaning to “Nest Egg”
Sunny
Samaritans or Entrepreneurs? New York Allows Egg Donor Payments For Stem Cell
Research
On
Immoral Markets