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2018-12-18
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Space Taxes

Summary:

Lando and Han can't get divorced. For tax reasons.

(I don't know anything about the Star Wars and would like to personally apologize to anyone who served.)

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

"What am I looking at?"

Lando leaned forward and laced his fingers together. "My taxes." He paused, then gestured to Han. "Our taxes," he corrected, with an unnecessarily rakish grin.

Leia squinted at the datapad. "Tax fraud."

"Oh, no no no. Absolutely not. My accounting is impeccable."

"I don't see how it could be," she said. "He's a smuggler."

"Hey," Han began. He shut his mouth when Leia leveled him with a look. He opened it again to persist, but saw that Lando had a shit-eating grin as he watched their argument-in-potentia. Han glowered at Lando, and made him grin wider. Han huffed, hooking his thumbs on his belt.

"Legally, he's a long-haul transport navigator," Lando said, and Leia snorted. "Because he has a spouse at home—me—he qualifies for a higher income deduction as well as a few credits unique to the profession."

"Wait, credits?" Han asked.

"Because he's my dependent," Lando continued, ignoring him.

"The hell I am."

"That puts me in a unique legal position—not many people know about this, but in order to incentivize long-haul transportation, a spouse who claims a long-haul transport navigator as a dependent qualifies as a household caretaker, which is a kind of head of household that's able to claim significantly more not only for themselves but for any other dependent spouses they may happen to have."

"But his transport isn't legal," Leia said, fascinated. Han was pretending to understand the conversation, which would have been more convincing if he weren't already fiddling with a kinetic sculpture on one of Lando's shelves.

"It's art."

"What?"

"As far as my taxes are concerned," Lando said, "Han transports art. They can't prove that it isn't. And I'm always careful to get the valuation right."

"How do you know what I transport?" Han asked, indignant. A piece came off the sculpture in his hands. He looked down at it, then looked at Lando. He made a hasty attempt to reattach the piece. The entire sculpture collapsed. Han took his hands from it, and attempted to lean casually against the shelves with his elbow to block it from view.

"They call me," Lando said.

"No," Leia gasped, delighted.

"Yes," Lando said, grinning again. "They know I'm his partner. They know I can't be sure I'm getting my fair share unless I know exactly what he's getting. So they call me."

"What!" Han stood straighter, his brow furrowed and his face all twisted into an incredulous pout of anger.

"They might have been able to catch him smuggling," Lando said to Leia, still not addressing Han.

"They would never," Han sneered.

"But they're never going to get him on tax evasion. There's no way he would have been paying taxes on his own."

"It never even occurred to me that he would," Leia said.

"I'm right here," Han reminded them.

"So you can see why I can't divorce him," Lando said.

"I don't follow," Leia said.

"My household caretaker status is the foundation of all of this," he said, pointing to the datapad. "I divorce Han and the whole thing collapses."

"Collapses how?" Leia asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Cloud City goes bankrupt."

Han choked.

"How many people have you married?" Leia demanded.

"Leia, you know that you're my favorite wife-in-law," Lando said, "but I don't think I'm comfortable discussing that aspect of my personal life."

The pile of former-sculpture slid from the shelf, and clattered to the floor.

Han pretended not to notice.

Notes:

Rambling meta explanation cross-posted from Tumblr for archival reasons:

if we are assuming that in space it is possible to be polyamorously married to various forms of alien, humanoid and otherwise, with variable lifespans and definitions of intimacy, we must also assume that the rules around the tax laws created to incentivize marriage must also be different

‘married filing jointly’ makes very little sense for situations where you are married to three people who each have their own spouses who may not be married to you, and furthermore the tax status is only necessary if what you are trying to encourage is long-term monogamous relationships (which i don’t think the empire or the republic particularly care about). and dependency rules about co-habitation do not make sense for species whose biology or culture negates the possibility of co-habitation even in closely intimate relationships (and definitely doesn’t make sense if someone’s job requires them to spend most of their time traveling through space hauling cargo, or if the government has mandated they work on another planet for some unspecified period of time)

(there is also no meaningful definition of ‘annually’ in the context of space taxes, and therefore taxation periods must be defined per-planet as lived on by the head of household)

(we must also assume that each planet has its own tax structure, and therefore what we are worried about here are republican or empirical taxes, or as they are colloquially known, ‘space taxes’, the taxes you pay to the space government as opposed to your planetary government)

in theory we could assume that the space government simply doesn’t incentivize marriage, because why would they, but that doesn’t work for fic purposes. therefore the most logical reason for the incentive is liability. in that case, each marriage would define one person as the head of household, and the other as a dependent--with the head of household being the person who is legally liable for the other’s taxes and whatnots. if a HoH also has legal access to the assets of their dependents, in order to maintain the household, this creates a set of checks and balances (as it were).

the person in a marriage defined as head of household must therefore be someone that the dependent trusts to be able to keep their shit in order, and the person defined as a dependent must be someone the head of household trusts not to totally bail on them with a bunch of federal property. who’s who therefore becomes a personal choice between the married individuals.

if we assume this stacks, then let’s say person A is married to person B, and person B is also married to person C. if person A is HoH in the first marriage, and person B is HoH in the second marriage, person A still gets access to all the assets of person C as the dependent of their dependent. this means if your husband is thinking about marrying some fucking rando, you’re incentivized to make sure everything is on the level so you don’t have some shady motherfucker with complete access to your assets, or alternately, the ability to make you legally liable for serious space crimes. this is the primary disincentive for fraud--marrying someone who wants to commit fraud is a fast track to either getting all your shit stolen or else ending up in jail for a crime you didn’t commit.

alternately, if lando is married to han, and leia is married to han, and lando and leia are both HoH, things get theoretically complicated. things can get split up according to various formulas, or one of them (leia, it’s leia) can claim more limited benefits in exchange for giving up the majority, as well as surrendering access to han’s assets or liability for his dumb horseshit (”don’t look at me, call his husband, i’m not responsible for that dingus i just have the option to be. you think i want access to his checking account? he’s got three dollars and a pack of gum in there.”). marriage in that case is more a matter of having familial access to your spouse (hospital visitation, etc).

the majority of incentives (in the form of exemptions, credits, etc) would be for the HoHs of dependents who do work the government particularly needs done, because government contractors are the ones the government is most worried about bailing off to nowhere planet with a bunch of stuff. a liability-based system makes it possible for the space government to go to their spouse like “hey... your husband took off with all our shit, pay up please”. therefore having certain kinds of dependent would alter the type of HoH someone is in order to determine what benefits they receive and what liabilities they are assumed to have taken on.

that’s the logic i used, anyway