The end of September was important to many of us who are prospective adoptive families, meaning we are in the middle of the adoption process but have not received a referral of a child. That is because for anyone who is still waiting, seeing October 1st come means the last glimmer of hope passes that your family's adoption will be finalized in 2012. That is painful on many levels, but to add 'insult to injury' so to speak, it may cost families like ours a lot of money. We entered this process almost two years ago thinking it would be possible to finalize our adoption in 2011... 2012 was a given. But as 2012 comes to a close, so does the adoption tax credit.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote my congressman about HR 4373, asking him to support it. Now that congress is out of session it is unclear what is going to happen, but I picked up this regarding what may happen: "We think that the chances of passing legislation that extends the adoption tax credit for some number of years or making it permanent are good because adoption and the adoption tax credit are popular on both sides of the aisle in Congress. It is most likely to happen as part of the passage of some form of the extension for the Bush era tax cuts or other major fiscal/debt/tax reform packages. It is highly unlikely that there will ever be a separate vote on the adoption tax credit, which is part of the reason why we have to try to build the co-sponsorship list now for bills like H.R. 4373 and S. 3616—so the support can be seen and pointed to when the future tax discussions take place. And, while the chances of extending the Bush era tax cuts in some form are reasonably good, it will be affected by how the Congress decides to deal with the federal deficit and the debt crisis. Some want to extend all the Bush era tax cuts for everyone, some want to extend most of them, but only for families making less than $250,000 a year, some want to reform the tax code, with or without the Bush era tax cuts, and nearly everyone agrees that tax cuts or tax reform cannot be allowed to increase the national debt any further. The adoption tax credit is part of that big mix and, as of now, appears to be in good shape under most options." (From adoptiontaxcredit.org)
For adoptive families wanting to follow the progress of this legislation, join "Save the Adoption Tax Credit" on Facebook for updates.
