Is New Tax Bill The Key To Affordable And Equitable Fertility Treatment?

Earlier this month, California Representatives Adam Schiff and Judy Chu introduced the Equal Access to Reproductive Care Act, a federal bill aimed to make the taxation of fertility treatments fairer, especially when it comes to surrogacy.

What Does It Do?

The bill is short — not even a full three pages — but if it passed, it would be big news for those unable to carry a pregnancy for themselves. The bill expands the definition of a current “medical care” tax deduction to explicitly include assisted reproduction. “Assisted reproduction” is broadly defined to include “any methods, treatments, procedures, and services for the purpose of effectuating a pregnancy and carrying it to term, including gamete and embryo donation, intrauterine insemination, in vitro fertilization, intracervical insemination, traditional reproductive surrogacy and gestational reproductive surrogacy.”

The bill also provides that “assisted reproduction shall be treated as medical care of the taxpayer or taxpayer’s spouse or dependent to the extent that the taxpayer or the taxpayer’s spouse or dependent, respectively, intends to take legal custody or responsibility for any children born as a result...