Pets As Dependents? New Lawsuit Against IRS Says Yes
Pets as dependents? According to a recent survey, more than 97 percent of pet owners in America think of their pets as family. The Internal Revenue Service, on the other hand, doesn’t. But as reported in Forbes magazine, a new lawsuit aims to make the IRS reconsider, and to treat pets as dependents for tax purposes.
Pets As Dependents Lawsuit Details
Amanda Reynolds, a New York attorney, has filed a lawsuit in Eastern District court, along with Finnegan Mary Reynolds. Finnegan, it turns out, is Reynolds’s dog.
The attorney argues that she provides Finnegan, a golden retriever, with food, shelter, medical care, training, transportation, and covers all other expenses of daily living. What’s more, Finnegan has no independent income, lives exclusively with Reynolds, and has expenses amounting to more than $5,000. That satisfies all the requirements in the tax code to treat Finnegan as a dependent. Except for being human.
Pets As Property
The IRS treats pets as property. The agency has allowed, in a few cases, for business owners to treat the costs of keeping a dog or cat as deductible. But that’s only for business owners, who might use a dog to guard a business 24 hours a day, or use a cat for pest control.
Reynolds argues in her lawsuit that classifying pets as property ignores their roles within households and families. As noted in the Forbes article, Reynolds says that Finnegan’s care responsibilities mirror, and sometimes surpass, those of human dependents. Reynolds writes that “For all intents and purposes, Finnegan is like a daughter, and is definitely a ‘dependent.’”
For the time being, the lawsuit is at a dead end. There’s a stay in place as the court waits for the IRS’s motion to dismiss. For now, it looks unlikely the government will treat pets as dependents, nor pet owners as eligible for Head of Household status. Of course, cat owners already know they are not the head of the household.
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