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
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