Opinion ID: 2077339
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: tax refund award

Text: The defendant also challenges the trial court's order allocating 20 percent of any undetermined future tax refund as additional alimony and 20 percent as additional child support. The defendant specifically claims that the order is unworkable, subject to manipulation, will hinder his tax planning and will lead to unintended results. He describes various hypothetical scenarios that could result in such a refund, and, therefore, additional child support and alimony payments to the plaintiff that were not intended by the court and that could lead to hostile court proceedings between the parties. The plaintiff responds that the order was not improper because it was necessary to discourage the defendant from manipulating his tax withholding amounts to the plaintiff's disadvantage, and adds that the defendant's claim is purely speculative and without any legal basis. We conclude that the order was improper only with respect to the payment of additional child support. The following additional facts and procedural history are relevant to our resolution of this claim. The trial court ordered the defendant to pay to the plaintiff 20 percent of any state or federal tax refund that he receives as child support for any year in which child support is owed, and 20 percent of any state and federal tax refund that he receives as alimony for any year in which alimony is owed. In response to the plaintiff's motion seeking further articulation of this order, the trial court explained that the plaintiff shall share in 20 percent of any tax refund awarded the defendant relating to over withholding on his base salary or cash bonus. The intention of the court is to discourage over withholding of taxes by the defendant in an attempt to reduce his support payments. The defendant did not seek further clarification or articulation of the order. We conclude that, insofar as the order allocated 20 percent of the defendant's tax refund as alimony, it was not improper. The purpose of the order was to discourage the over withholding of taxes by the defendant to reduce his support payments and applies only if the defendant receives a tax refund for withholding more taxes than necessary from his base salary or cash bonus. We agree with the defendant that implementation of the order may prove cumbersome and that the same result of discouraging tax manipulation could have been achieved by a simple, direct order that the defendant not over withhold on his taxes or by an order that the defendant pay a smaller, capped percentage of his gross, or pretax, cash bonus as supplemental alimony, thereby eliminating the practical difficulties inherent in the current order. Nevertheless, we cannot say that the trial court abused its broad discretion in entering such an order. We further conclude, however, that insofar as the order pertains to the defendant's child support obligation, it is inconsistent with the guidelines and must be reversed for all of the reasons described in part I of this opinion regarding the calculation of child support.