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Illinois Considers Taxing Custom Software
Foobar_Zen writes "Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is proposing to tax custom software; he is hoping to generate $64 million.
You can read the story at burrwolff.com.
I am wondering if there any other states that currently tax for custom software? How is this going to affect Illinois? What does this do to independent application and software developers?" And what about software that adds value but itself is available without charge?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I doubt this could ever go through, since the definition of 'custom software' is too vague. Would this tax me if i installed a copy of ms office with custom options? What about 3rd party plugins (paid for by me, or free)? What about rolling my own linux kernel? Or even making my own distro. And as for little programmer shops that would ultimately feel the heat, does this mean that when they package up their software and put it up on a shelf it's no longer "Custom software"? Bad idea, bad definition, bad enforceability, bad tax revenue idea.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
Not too hard to figure out - pay $10 million for a custom system in Chicago, or pay $9.5 million for the same system in Gary, Indiana.
...and who gets to define it?
Just sell a license for a lifetime. You can just sell them licenses each time you charge for changes.
And what about software that adds value but itself is available without charge?
I would think this has to be executed as a sales tax, where the tax is applied to the billed amount on the invoice. Value but no charge would be next to impossible to implement and audit.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
Yay! Just what the world needs, more archane, archaic taxation systems that mean that you have to employ people just so you can be sure that the government is taking the right amount of money from you.
And if you pay too much - forget it, you'll never see that money again. If you pay too little, they'll take you to court and add huge fines.
You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't even quit the damn game.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
The relevant section reads:
1. Initiate sales tax on custom software: The governor estimates a business tax increase of $64 million by eliminating the distinction between canned software sold at retail (subject to sales tax), custom software (subject to service occupation tax on the value of tangible personal property transferred with the software) and software licensed or leased by the developer (currently not taxed). The Governor's proposal would either repeal the Department of Revenue regulation that distinguishes between a sale and a license of software or create an entirely new tax on revenues from software licensing.
If I were a company director, the first reaction would be to see if open source software exists to do the same job, and if it were cheaper to hire/contract to write inhouse software. Looks like this would hurt contractors/small companies than anything else.
The matter of the fact is, is that if this causes too many problems, people will just leave the state, or stop producing software. Then when the Govenor realizes that his tax is not working, or that he is causing a brain drain effect, he will wisen up. Taxing something as amorphous as custom software is a great folly, and honestly, people will not stand for it.
je suis parce que j'aime
I just wonder how big the check from the Indian government was. There's no better way to kill any possible IT revival in this country than to tax it to death. Way to go Illinois!
Tea and kung-fu. Life is good. Rising Phoenix
At least the proposed Illinois tax only appears to only tax the cash that changes hands. But again, it's only at the press release level and there's no real wording that I've seen.
Mhhh... watercraft float on water, witches float on water. Therefore watercraft must be witches!
Can we burn them?
Now today, we get his quick fix plan to tax custom software! And I'm sure we'd all agree this is much better than a casino in Chicago, right? Right??
Bah! Me no like politicians.
Taft
It's blizzards latest game where Orcs and Humans battle it out over the high seas... ...I heard its going to be bundled with Doom 3 this summer.
Writing software is a service. So is legal work, plumbing, lawn mowing, ... If they're going to tax custom software, then _all_ services should be taxed.
These people forget that if you tax an activity, it serves to discourage the activity. What this does is discourage software programming in Illinois.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Well the trick is to find a Programmer who will do all this custom software development for free? Custom Software development usually always paid. Because with "Free" Custom Software development, first you will need to find a programmer willing to do it for free, which will be hard because a lot of custom software development is usually quite boring and the programmer will not get much credit outside the company that is using it. But say you did find someone to develop it for you for free the next trick is keeping them motivated to get it done,"its free so they can take as long as they want its not hurting them any", plus if the person is doing it for free then they probably have a paying job or are in school, the slim possibility of being independently wealthy. But in most cases the job will be worked on part time at best. So by the time the application gets done it will be a long time. and probably a lot of loss productivity.
Also most Custom Software doesn't bother with any sort of licensing basically as the programmer makes the code and sends it to the customer and they pay him for his hours the code is their they can do whatever they want with it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The software is free, and copyrighted, and useless without a dongle.
The dongle costs $$$. The only "custom" software in it is the authentication key, and if they're going to tax that, they'll have to tax RFID chips too.
Any other problems?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Actually, there's a serious implication here that could set a bad precedent. In essence, Blagojevich is considering double taxation, where in this case, the original sale of the product is taxed and then if the product is resold, it's taxed again.
This is not a good thing if this resolution passes due to the cascade effect this may have on other "resellable" items.
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Most countries that have a sales tax also have a tax on services. In Europe its called VAT and in Oz/NZ its called General Sales Tax (GST). If they start this, I expect it won't be long before every service is taxed just like current sales tax which sort of makes sense in a service economey. Of course the better solution would be get better value for our tax money.
Well I will just have to give them the software for free, but charge them a monthly fee for potential support calls. I'll probably get a much better revenue stream that way.
meh
Also most Custom Software doesn't bother with any sort of licensing
That's because it's the very definition of a work for hire - the programmer is hired specifically to create that work on behalf of their employer. At the end of it, I think everyone would expect to own what they had paid to be created.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Also most Custom Software doesn't bother with any sort of licensing basically as the programmer makes the code and sends it to the customer and they pay him for his hours the code is their they can do whatever they want with it.
In quite a few countries "service tax" (or "value added tax") is charged on this sort of transaction. Both are a flat rate tax on the billed transaction. It doesn't really matter if the software you use is libre/gratis, as long as your bill amount is nonzero.
And this would be called free trade? Just like the free trade in steel, lumber, etc that the US repects?
Even setting aside the hypocrisy of preaching free trade then not practicing it, your custom duty may be impractical: you're forgetting that a great deal of software code written in India is written by programmers employed by American companies, so how you'd levy a custom duty on, say, a product that was coded by Indian employees of a company based in California would be interesting.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The relevant section is that software licensed or leased by the developer will now be taxed. Since Microsoft essentially leases their software under the Software Assurance plan, that means there will now be an extra tax burden on companies using Microsoft products. Microsoft will make sure that doesn't happen, because that will just be one more reason to switch to an OSS solution.
What, me worry?
I don't know if that is the case in the US, but that's definitely wrong in the UK. If a company pays a contractor/freelancer to write some code, the contractor/freelancer still OWNS the code in question UNLESS an agreement is signed transferring ownership of the work. - This catches many companies out.
It is not uncommon for companies to sell custom software but retain intellectual property rights to that software. Chances are that if one client requires a solution, then there are others out there with the same needs.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
Sounds typical for the Midwestern states.
There are still a significant number of politicians that want to see the information economy go away. Indiana is even worse in this regard. They have put tons of money in a dumb attempt to bring manufacturing jobs back and they leave in little things that give companies that could make real cash and create decent jobs major headaches.
If you are going to give out corporate welfare, at least give it out to people that could actually HELP you... jeesh.
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
What is custom software?
Is a spreadsheet that contains data and calculates financial statistics 'custom software'?
Is a plug-in to a web browser 'custom software'?
Is an operating system that did not come pre-loaded on a computer 'custom software'?
Is any software that did not come pre-loaded on my computer 'custom software'?
Are those free AOL cds that you see everywhere 'custom software'?
Is TurboTax, the software I use to pay my taxes 'custom software'?
Is the website that I am running in my basement 'custom software'?
This legislation is WAY TOO VAGUE to get through... Stand up and make your voices heard Illinois voters!
This is also the case in Canada. Copyright belongs to the author. I've used it many times
The problem is that the state is running out of money - they propose to fix it by increasing taxes, something that they can do since they are effectivly a monopoly in the geographic area.
If I have a budget problem, I might try to charge my customers more; but I will probably cut back on what I do or choose cheaper suppliers.
How much money would the state save if it moved all its office systems from Microsoft to Linux ?
In this case, you'd alrady be paying sales tax, wouldn't you?
You're wrong about that. There is no "special tax exemption" in place here - custom software development is generally a "work-for-hire" situation. If someone develops custom software for a company, they get paid for the time spent on it. This is paid either as an employee of company (i.e. the standard paycheck), or as an independant contractor (billable hours).
In neither case is a bill of sale presented by the programmer to the company in question. In fact, in most (all?) states, you aren't even required to get a sales tax license if all your work is consultant in nature (which this would be considered).
Also, it is already taxed - namely income tax. This payment is even reported to the IRS - either as a paycheck to the employee (W-2) or as an outside programmer (1099-MISC).
What this bill is proposing (among other things) is add a new tax to custom development, by requiring the payment of sales tax in addition to the income tax already being paid on it.
Currently, there are three types of software transfers:
1. Sale (buy MS Office at CompUSA) - Has a sales tax.
2. Custom Software (have someone write a program for you) - Has a "service occupation tax"
3. Lisenced or leased (pay for a licence)- no tax.
What the govenor is saying is he wants the state to consider, for tax purpouses, the 3rd type of transfer the same as the 1st type, so they get a sales tax for the lisence.
Empahsis mine.
Interestingly, if you've ever read a EULA, you never actually BUY software. You usually are buying a licence to install and use the software. Which could, theoretically, have a massive impact on buisnesses in that state, if they had to pay for every license they bought, especially in multi-user buisness environments.
This PDF file offers a clearer explanation of what the Govenor is proposing (check page 2, 2nd paragraph).
The whole issue of taxing "Custom Software" makes the assumption that it is untaxed. It is quite taxed so long as it is made in the USA. The Labor of the Employees makes it's cost nearly 70% tax.
The whole issue on a duty on software from anywhere else has to do with the disparity of the tax situations. To be most brief the Citizens of the USA are consigned by Congress to pay pretty high taxes. The purposes for these taxes include care of the elderly, national armed forces, various national purposes, and of course the US National Debt.
The load for retirement in the USA will approach 30% of gross payrolls in just 17 years. To allow Americans to carry all of these burdens and then to compel them to live in the "World Market" is national suicide. This will compel the workers to face ruin or to abandon the support of the various US National efforts and costs.
The concept that the USA should have to compete head to head even inside their own market against this situation forms a "Classic Trade War" against US Citizens by their own government. Essentially all players here should have to pay here. In addition mechanisms (WTO has prevented these) need to be developed to allow the Americans to lower their taxation for export markets so that they can trade world wide.
If a tax on imports is NOT imposed the only solution here is to remove the INCOME TAXES entirely and replace them with a National Sales Tax. Check out the Fair tax This allows much of this to be achieved.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
In Canada, as I understand it, unless there is a contract saying otherwise the copyright is in the hands of the entity who hired you to write it -- but you still have some very small rights as the author... For instance, another individual can't slap their name on the code and declare it their creation, nor can they modify it and leave your name on it without citing that the code was modified. Note that they can remove your name altogether and just leave the copyright notice... which is pretty normal... I've had that done to me with documentation in my workplace many times.
This is somewhat sensible in that the company/person who commissioned the work provided everything which was needed for that software to be authored, including money to compensate your time. If it were not for them, the software would not be written. I think this is very similar to the way it works in the U.S.
The "author" normally must destroy all their copies of the code upon leaving, and they're not allowed to design a similar solution for anyone else. That last aspect is, IMHO, grey, fuzzy and awful... get a contract before doing contract work like this.
I'm surprised it isn't like that in Britain. Canada's laws are normally quite close.
There is no special tax for custom cabinets.
There is no special tax for custom photograph/art frames.
There is no special tax for a custom paint job for a car.
AFAIK, there are no special taxes for custom anything, whether it's a good, service, or form of information.
So what makes software so different?
I'm not sure about your state, but here in VA if one buys a car (either used or new) from a retailer or private party, it is taxed.
Legally, any good that is sold, whether it be the first time or resale is subject to state sales tax.
Cars are easy for the state to keep track of. When you go to register a new (to you) vehicle, the DMV makes you pay the tax before you can continue. It's a little bit harder for them to send a tax inspector to every yard sale and flea market. They know when to choose their battles.
From a cube-mate who recently bought a boat: Watercraft are also taxed in this manner (here in VA).
That? That was a pigeon.
It appears to me that all the gov is doing is trying to close some loopholes, not some evil scheme to take over the world as the post and most responses seem to believe. Currently the state taxes retail software (duh), they tax consultants when they write software (duh), but some people are bucking the system and not charging hourly consulting rates, only a license fee, and that is a tax loophole at the moment. So, unless you are against all taxes (and who isnt?) there is really no earth shattering meaning to this proposal.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Interesting news must be getting scarce.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
I've copyrighted a few programs about 10 years ago, so I believe that was the case at least then. I believe that notice was listed on the actual forms to submitting for the copyright.
Now if you DON'T get paid for the work, then the AUTHOR maintains the copyright regardless of who uses it and for what purpose -- again unless expressly transferred otherwise (to another party, public domain, etc).
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
Maine imposes 5% tax on custom software.
From Maine Statues, Title 36, Section 1752 - Definitions
1-E. Custom computer software program. "Custom computer software program" means any computer software that is written or prepared exclusively for a particular customer. "Custom computer software program" does not include a "canned" or prewritten program that is held or exists for a general or repeated sale, lease or license, even if the program was initially developed on a custom basis or for in-house use. An existing prewritten program that has been modified to meet a particular customer's needs is a "custom computer software program" to the extent of the modification, and to the extent that the amount charged for the modification is separately stated.
------
I called the Maine Revenue Service a while back and asked them how they determined the difference between a custom computer program, writing a maintenance script, making an application macro, spreadsheet formula or adding a Windows shortcut to a client's desktop -- at what point does this become taxable?
They replied: there's no one here that can tell you, and there's no one that will be here that can call you back with the answer.
So I stopped putting "custom programming" on my invoices, and all labor is now charged as "computer maintenance". IANAL, just a tech guy trying to comply, but there's just no way to.
1. You are an employee (i.e. paid under W-2). In this case, the copyright on all works created by you for your employer belongs to the employer.
2. You are a contractor (i.e. paid under 1099) and the contract explicitly states the work you do is "WORK FOR HIRE". In this case, the copyright again belongs to the client.
3. You are a contractor and the contract does NOT state the work is "work for hire". In this case, the copyright stays with you. It doesn't matter that the client paid you or not. I think there is case law that states the client is at least entitled to a de-facto license to use the work in question but I'm not sure about that.
Cheers,
Rob
You're joking, but in both cases, it sounds like ol' Rod wants to tax people who sell goods privately. I'm with you, actually; this business of taxing watercraft that individuals sell stinks. I knew my state was in financial trouble, but I wasn't sure until now just how bad.
Now, I wonder if our governor will keep taking expensive flights between Springfield and Chicago every weekend at taxpayers' expense if he expects Joe Sixpack to charge and pay taxes when he sells his bass boat?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Just imagine a Burrwolff of ... er, wait a minute...
Understand the context, though: Illinois has a young, Kennedy-esque governor who claims to be a populist and is working "for the people." He has steadfastly refused to raise general sales taxes or income taxes and is instead turning toward businesses to blanace a 1.7 billion dollar state deficit.
This governor does not work in the state capital and instead spends all his time in Chicago because "he's got a family to raise, and he can't raise it in Springfield" (or something to that effect). So he spends lots of moola jetting back and forth.
The theory with Blagojevich is that he's positioning himself for a presidential bid in 2008 and is loathe to contradict his "populist roots" by imposing a tax on the "backs of the hard working men and women of Illinois."
In a sense, yeah, that's good. I can appreciate that. But the result of his fervent populism is a state government that's only a couple weeks away from a legislative break and is facing enormous pressure within the next two weeks to balance the budget and erase a 1.7 billion -- billion! -- dollar deficit from the state rolls.
He's in a tough spot, and because he's a union-guy and a guy's guy, Governor Sunshine has backed himself into a corner. The *only* things left are (a) massive taxes on businesses (bad for the state because we have lots of other states close by that would benefit from a business exodus from Illinois) or (b) gambling.
He's an odd bird, Blagojevich, and he's scraping -- literally, with a little plastic spatula -- the bottom of every barrel across the state to raise money.
Do I agree with what he's doing?
I'm not sure. I think Illinois government is in complete *disarray* -- lots of agencies are understaffed, for example -- but so long as he doesn't raise taxes on Ma and Pa, he's cool.
Welcome to American politics, I guess.
*shrug*
this is pretty vague in the article. Is having your admin run some shell scripts that modify a canned package count as a new piece of custom software? Would that be re-taxed then if it was bought in the first place? How many times can something be taxed? Or would it be proportional by..line count of code? If package x costed 100 clams, and was 50,000 lines of code and you modified x amounts of code and... you can see where this could go. Is it a brand new transaction then? The entire package, or is it proportionally taxed, or what? It's cuckoo really.
rhetorical question. If you follow around US federal reserve notes,from the second they are poof created, they are all tax dollars already, ie, it's all been taxed into government ownership previously. If you are dealing in FRNs, none of it is your property. None, zero. It's all the governments (well, a private banks paper), and they let you use some of it. And being legal debt instruments, they start out as a debt, and you get paid with a debt,you attempt to pay off a debt by transferring another debt, and so on. They retax their own debt, and so on.
Sound incredibly stupid? Why yes,yes it is, it is an extremely stupid way to create "money" for anyone productive, but it's a superscam con for the people who start it and have people faked out into using it. It's fat city for the other guys. Using future debt as a medium of exchange instead of having money represent produced-wealth is lame to begin with, but it sure is handy for government and some rich banks.
aaack, another time...It's such an overwhelming and successful con....
Anyway, without seeing how the law is worded it's hard to tell,I'm only looking at the article, but seems like it's so open ended and vague that it would rapidly rise (most likely) to beyond this 64 million dollars with the application of normal bureaucratic greed. Then come the lawyers and the courts and the judges and the lawsuits,typical government crap.
You know, the soviet union collapsed when their economy was so much black market and grey market and government bloat that it eclipsed the above board official "white market". It had as much to do with that as anything reagan did with military one upsmanship. Our government now is doing it's level best to force everyone into being a criminal it appears, doing it's level best to make the economy so incredibly lamer complex with regulations and scams that they think up that's it's almost impossible to deal with it. I wonder if they really understand what will eventually happen, if it's intentional, or if they are truly that incredibly stupid.
So if I write Macro in Excel will that be taxed too??!! And what about my .procmail script which dumps things from some people into a Folder. IS that also taxable? What is "Custom Software"??
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
Relax!
I RTFA'd and all it says is that they want to eliminate the difference between custom software (currently hit by a some odd tax which is probably a lower % and may be 0% in some cases) and shring wrap software (which is hit with normal sales tax).
Also, licensed or leased software (ala software as a service type things becoming common) will also have sales tax (currently is not taxed). I expect that latter change will spread quickly as "software service" business plan becomes more common.
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
I'd write the custom software for free... just as long as they paid me a decent hourly rate to drink coffee while I was doing it! ;-)
well for starters, you need to look at the actual amount of money being brought in. They are actually talking about an extremely small amount of money. 50 something million dollars spread around isnt that much - so maybe this is a tax not on the software but on the SALE of the software? Could someone confirm that I am correct? In large transactions for custom installations, you have to tax the consulting time, but not the actual product its self right? While I dont agree with ANY taxes to begin with, this isnt as terrible and awefull as everyone is making it out to be - its just another tax. If you dont want them, dont vote donk ;)
I think it's more likely welcome Indiana. Companies which can gain from outsourcing aren't really going to change for this. But new startups with 1-50 employees likely are... given that (by my knowledged at least) most of the software development in this state is done in Chicago & the Champaign-Urbana area... that puts those companies between 15-60 minutes of the Indiana border... almost makes more sense to just lengthen everyone's commute.
Then again, I'm sensing a typical slashdot response of... THIS IS AWFUL, HOW COULD THEY!... without any real knowledge of the situation, myself included. Do other states do this, and if so what percent. The headline is a bit misleading, he's not really talking about some special tax, he's basically saying software falls into a grey area because it's often licensed and leased rather than sold.
Given that I work for a company which leases software, I'm very curious to see where this goes.
Sorry, but you've got things backwords in this case.
In Canada, intellectual property remains in the hands of the person who created it, unless a contract exists which specifically transfers it, or if the creator is an "employee" of the company.
So if I was contracted to develop a site for a client, and the IP issue was not discussed in the contact, then the copyright stays with me. This would restrict the business from changing or altering my code/design or giving it away to someone else.
One interesting copyright law which is in Canada (and most of the rest of the world) but not in the US is the idea of 'Moral Rights'. Unless waived, moral rights prevent a new copyright holder from altering the created work in a method which would distort, mutilate, or otherwise prejudice the honour or reputation of the author. It isn't in the US mainly because the entertainment industry wanted to use copyrighted ideas in hollywoodized movies ;-)
Links to back me up!
-
Rod Apeldoorn
If you give something away to someone, whether it's free books at your yard sale or free sample CDs of Linux® at a sales booth at some tech convention, how much sales tax does the recipient owe? Zero.
If you are running a store and sell someone a CD of Microsoft Windows® you're supposed to charge them sales tax on the $149.95 upgrade price or the $495.00 no previous edition price (or whatever it currently is).
If you are running a software house and you sell someone a CD of an application which costs $5,000 including customization, some part of that cost is for the software itself and thus should be taxed same as Microsoft Windows (if you believe imposing sales tax on items which are sold is a legitimate action of the government).
Raising the issue of a 'sales tax' on free items is a red herring here. The issue is whether custom software should be 'sold' for a fee untaxed, while commercial, off the shelf (COTS) software is sold for a fee is subject to sales tax.
This was an old issue, oh, 20 years ago when I lived in California and had a sales tax permit, and one of the items in the monthly newsletter the Franchise Tax Board sent out was a mention that while labor for customizing software was not subject to sales tax, the base price of software sold was, same as any other commodity. I don't think it's unreasonable to treat the non-labor tax aspect of custom software any different from the non-labor tax aspect of COTS software.
Paul Robinson <Postmaster@paul.washington.dc.us>
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Taxes do not "generate" money.
If he wants to make money, he should get a job.
-- this is not a
And if those Indian programmers were developing that software on servers physically located in California, it would be much more difficult to figure customs duty...
We should vote for a tax on stupid governors. There's your complete medical budget right there.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Uhhh. where does the comma go in the parent's title?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Here is the aforementioned service occupation tax in Illinois:
http://www.revenue.state.il.us/LegalInformation/r
A disclaimer: IANACPA (not a CPA).
After reviewing the tax code mentioned in the article, it seems to me that as long as you're not charging for packaged software or licenses, then you're pretty much in the clear.
Most contractors I've met, charge labor by the hour to compose, enrich or repair custom software anyway (as a work for hire), at which point you are not exchanging any "tangible property" (or "intangible property" for that matter). They charged labor for something of undetermined value, plain and simple.
However, if it ever became an issue that you absolutely had to hand your client a pre-packaged solution that needed modifications, then just go open source. Simply charge labor for installation, and enriching the product, but "sell" them the software for what its worth: $0. IMO, I think this could also has the added benefit of side-stepping the (existing) taxcode, since you're performing labor on a product of zero-value (labor performed on a product of value apparently has lots of implications in Part 140).
The B-man is so damn desperate to actually look like he's accomplishing something in office.
He's trying to:
Raid the coffers of private institutions and governing bodies.
When they deny him access to funds that he has NO right to touch, he tries to undermine them and replace them with structures that WILL allow him to steal those funds.
Trying to put a tax on everything in sight (the fucker's probably going to try to institue a BREATHING tax next).
He seems hell-bent on making Illinois completely and utterly unfriendly to any sort of business imaginable.
Then he'll cry about how his opponents are predecessors have driven those businesses out.
Rod Blagojevich....Front-Running Candidate for Retroactive Abortion.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!