The Buzz

The first baby of the new year gets the headlines, but the last baby of the old year puts bucks in daddy’s and mommy’s pockets real fast.

“Mere minutes can mean major tax savings,” says Lezlie Shivar, district manager for H&R Block in Lexington.

Babies born on Dec. 31 bring a retroactive tax exemption of $3,500.

“To get that same tax break,” Shivar noted, “parents of babies born … on Jan. 1, will have to wait until they file their 2009 taxes — in 2010.”

To call attention to the financial rewards of good family planning or good luck, as the case may be, H&R Block presented gift baskets to the last babies born in 2008 at two Lexington hospitals, Central Baptist and St. Joseph East.

The winners are Shannon and Robin Melton of Nicholasville, parents of Weston, who was born at Central Baptist at 11:03 p.m. Wednesday, and Amanda and Bret Hamilton of Hillsboro, whose twins, Wyatt and Garrett, were born at 3:12 and 3:14 p.m. at St. Joe.

The early bird gets the worm, but the late bird gets the cash.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Taxes. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.