Opinion ID: 2518798
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Marian's income tax liability

Text: Glenn last contends that the superior court overestimated Marian's income-tax liabilities. In her worksheets, Marian assigned herself a tax liability of $6,260 on her imputed income of $52,700. This $6,260 hypothetical liability was identical to the figure agreed upon by the parties and approved by the court in 2002 when it issued the original child-support order. Glenn's 2005 child-support worksheets proposed to assign Marian a lower tax liability, $4,556, a figure Glenn calculated using 2005 IRS tax tables. Glenn argues that this updated calculation is more accurate and thus should have been used instead of the original hypothetical figure, which, in his view, had no factual basis. In response, Marian points out that all of the original figures used in connection with her imputed potential income were necessarily hypothetical; because Glenn agreed with this hypothetical tax liability in 2001 and urged the court to adopt it, she contends, it is too late for him to change the figure now. But Marian's argument places form over substance. In effect, it proposes to establish a rule that would lock all future tax consequences of imputed potential income to consequences existing at the time of original imputation. Such a rule would conflict with basic principles of fairness requiring tax-support calculations to be as accurate as reasonably possible. Marian does not dispute that calculating her tax liabilities using the tax provisions applicable in 2002 produces an outdated result. Yet she identifies no sound reason why the outdated information should be acceptable in the modified order if it would not have been in the original order. We thus conclude that Marian's ongoing tax liability must be calculated using currently applicable tax tables.