A Taxing Question of Medical Necessity
gidreform @ 8:58 pm

Kelley Winters, Ph.D.
GID Reform Advocates

http://gidreform.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/a-taxing-question-of-medical-necessity/

Many trans and especially transsexual Americans were relieved this week by the U.S. Tax Court decision to reverse earlier IRS positions and allow costs of hormonal and surgical transition care to be deducted as medical expenses. The ruling concluded:

    Petitioner has shown that her hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery treated disease within the meaning of section 213 and were therefore not cosmetic surgery. Thus petitioner's expenditures for these procedures were for "medical care" as defined in section 213(d)(1)(A), for which a deduction is allowed under section 213(a).

However, this recognition of the legitimacy of medical transition came at a cost to the dignity of transsexual women and men. It relied on the flawed diagnostic nomenclature of Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) and its implication of mentally "disordered" gender identity.