Easley calls for adoption tax credit

Gov. Mike Easley, pushing to encourage adoptions, proposes a special tax credit to offset adoption expenses in his budget for the next fiscal year.

It would cost $3 million a year to fund, which he said is a small part of the state's $20 billion budget.

Easley, a Democrat and a Catholic, said he wants to focus attention on adoption as a choice in the traditional debate over abortion.

Easley's wife, Mary, has recently recorded public service announcements that are airing on radio and TV programs statewide. "Open your heart and home to a child by adopting or becoming a foster parent," she says on the spots.

Easley's tax credit was proposed last year, too, but did not pass -- one of the few of his "child and family" initiatives that was not adopted.

Easley said in an interview that he won't take its passage for granted this year as he did last year.

"I'm going to keep my eye on it a lot closer this time," the governor said.

The state tax credit would be worth half of an existing federal credit.

It would offset expenses of an adoption, according to Easley's staff and an IRS publication, that include "reasonable and necessary" adoption fees, court costs, attorney's fees, traveling expenses (including money spent for meals and lodging away from home), and other expenses directly related to the legal adoption of an eligible child.

Eligible expenses are capped at about $11,000.

To qualify, an eligible child must be under 18 or be physically or mentally incapable of caring for himself or herself. The adoption credit cannot be taken for a child who is not a U.S. citizen or resident unless the adoption becomes final.

About 10 percent of the state's roughly 7,000 adoptions in the past two years involved foreign adoptees, records show.

Easley said that the tax credit will encourage adoptions and that it should get support from people who say, "We need to have a culture of life," as well as those who say, "We need to protect a woman's right to choose."

"I'm not sure everybody fits one category or the other," Easley said. "If you're in that category that doesn't want any abortions whatsoever, then you ought to be willing to help fund these programs ... And if you're ... truly pro-choice, then you ought to really give people a choice."