GOP Bill Gives IRS New Job: Policing Abortion Payments

If the GOP’s "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" becomes law, it could force the IRS to ask prying questions about abortion in any tax audit it conducts, an executive from the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee told Congress this week. Under the bill, women who received any kind of tax benefit for their health insurance and used it to pay for an abortion would have to prove that the terminated pregnancy was the result of rape or incest, or that their lives were at risk, Mother Jones reports.

Asked if, for example, a woman could use pre-tax money she’d contributed to an HSA to pay for an abortion, the tax expert replied, “On audit [she] would have to demonstrate or prove, ideally by contemporaneous written documentation, that it was incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger. It would be fairly intrusive for the woman.” There might even need to be a question added to the tax form asking if a woman had had an abortion, she said. “If you pass the law like this, the IRS would be required to enforce it.” (More IRS stories.)