Marvel's lawyers get into fanboy flamewar with IRS about human-status of its mutants

A classic fanboy-type argument has real-world tax implications. If the IRS decrees that Marvel's comic book mutants are human, then Marvel will have to pay more taxes.

In the non-fictional world, our world, Marvel is taking the position that mutants are not humans at all. But this isn’t an ideological or a moral stance. Instead, it is a financial one. Toys manufactured in other countries and imported into the US are subject to taxes, but those taxes are lower if the toys represent non-human characters. That has led to Marvel lawyers arguing that an action figure representing, say, Wolverine, is actually “representing animals or other non-human creatures (for example, robots and monsters).” This argument leads to a good conversation on the questions of humanity and acceptance that have long been part of the X-Men storyline.

Perhaps Marvel can tape a small styrofoam cube to its characters to skirt the rules.

Real-Life Weirdness: Marvel Lawyers Insist Mutants Aren’t Human (Via Neatorama)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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geekbruin

I LOVE Radiolab.
http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

I just hope the mutant rights activists don’t get upset over this.
Gary Quick

Radiolab just did a story on this last week.
http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2011/dec/22/mutant-rights/

And the ruling was that they weren’t human.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?q=Toy+Biz,+Inc.+v.+US+%28248+F.Supp.2d+1234,+2003%29&hl=en&as_sdt=2,22&as_vis=1&case=18171183470766960868&scilh=0
- http://profiles.google.com/josephfinn Joseph Finn
  
  All of which is moot now anyway, since the tax distinction between “dolls” and “toys” was abolished.
- bklynchris
  
  Thank you. The meta irony is crazy, the premise that mutants are not human is the foundation of the X-men plot, if not the plot to like, you know, everything! Were they to be found human, they might cease to exist altogether!
- http://twitter.com/criminalcrafts Miss Demeanor
  
  I found this part of the ruling particularly hilarious…
  
  Thus, since the figures at issue all have “the appearance of human beings” by virtue of having “a head, mouth, eyes, nose, hair, arms, torso, breasts, muscles, and [with one exception] legs and feet;” are “noticeably lifelike and constructed in a manner which permits an impressive range/simulation of human movement;” are “dressed as human beings and equipped with weapons and accessories in a manner associated with actual or fictional warfare;” and finally possess “such human characteristics as gender, race, physical impediment/handicap, and nationality,” [14] according to Customs, they fall under “the broad definition of the tariff term `dolls.’ “ Id. at 21-22 (emphasis added). Finally, Customs argues that the few non-human characteristics the figures possess, such as claws or robotic arms, “fall far short of transforming [these figures] into something other than the human beings which they represent.”Id. at 23.[15
  
  Apparently if you have boobs or are in a wheel chair and the ability to declare war you fall into the doll category, even with the addition of claws and robot arms BUT monsters, angels and aliens are taxed differently.
  
  Really shouldn’t the determining factor be… “Do they have a soul?”
semiotix

Well, at least this will provide the basis for a formal test case of the Keene Act. I hope the IRS has some good lawyers because SHE-HULK SMASH SPECIOUS ARGUMENTS.
Vengefultacos

You know, when you get a tax break for non-human toys, it’s time to fire at least 1/2 the regulators and simplify the tax codes.
- acidrain69
  
  The regulators didn’t write the tax code, they enforce it. If you want to fire congress, I’m OK with that. Especially the republican half.
  - JohnBerry
    
    You only want to get rid of half of the problem?
evanberkowitz

The idea that mutants aren’t treated equally as humans would really upset Magneto.
- retepslluerb
  
  Not really. Magneto has no problem when mutants treat flatscans as inferior.
rrh

So they track this back to 1995 when a couple lawyers try to apply this distinction from the tariff schedule to the Marvel toys. But they don’t do more than speculate about how the classification got in there in the first place. It was created to protect the American doll industry, they presume.

I want to hear more about this doll industry that was being protected, and the congressman or senator or whoever proposed that this was an important distinction to enshrine in law.
- http://datashade.livejournal.com/ DataShade
  
  Uh, but the details I saw said these were *import* taxes, so how would a lower tax on dolls protect the US doll industry?
  - spool32
    
    Higher tax on dolls. The reason? I’m going to guess: Barbie.
Manny

What about people dropped in toxic waste, exposed to strange radiation, or bitten by super-spiders, rather than born-mutants? Did they stop being human? Is Bruce Banner human part-time? I’d love to hear these important questions under discussion in a congressional hearing.
http://2012diaries.blogspot.com/ tristan eldritch

If I remember correctly, the standard position in the Marvel Universe was that all X-Men related characters were “mutants” (hence hated and feared), whereas other characters like as Spiderman and the Avengers were “super-powered humans” (hence loved by the general population, with the exception of J Jonah Jameson.) It always struck me as a slightly flakey distinction, but there you go.
- retepslluerb
  
  Not really. Marvel mutants are born with their powers, even if they don’t manifest until puberty or under servere stress.
  - flosofl
    
    If we’re going to geek out, I also seem to remember (waaaay back in my comic collection phase) that mutants in Marvel’s universe were a considered distinct species: Homo Superior
bjacques

Marvel lawyers vs the IRS: set these two asses to grind corn.

They’ve been represented as people since issue 1. It’s the point of the series. readers are supposed to feel empathy for the mutants as if they’re human. If Marvel try to argue otherwise in an attempt to game the tax system, I doubt a judge will feel empathy for their lawyers.
Rider

The real issue is why is there such a stupid tax law.
JoshP

CP from the marvel.com website:
‘Marvel Entertainment, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies, built on a proven library of over 8,000 characters featured in a variety of media over seventy years. Marvel utilizes its character franchises in entertainment, licensing and publishing.’
You’re not a human Xavier, you’re a member of a prominent character-based wholly owned subsidiary.
What? That snap was the sound of the grips on your wheelchair cracking?
CLamb

What does the IRS have to do with this? It was Congress and the President who made the law and the Customs Service which ruled the items are dolls.
Paul Renault

It’s simple to decide: Marvel just has to have the mutants mate with bona fide humans. If the humans or X-(wo)men are able to conceive and give birth to non-sterile children, then they’re human.

(Hmm, I’m thinking a boat-load of sold-out special editions covering this.)
- Paul Renault
  
  I’ve just found a good real-world use for Rule 34.
PhosPhorious

Quick show of hands: how many of you Marvel fanboys and girls already had already worked out a detailed legal argument on exactly this topic. . .

/awkward silence/

Yeah. . . me neither. . .
- WhyBother
  
  This case was an old bit of marvel trivia when I started on comics… which is why it’s weird to see it discussed in the present-tense, using anachronisms like “flamewar”.
  
  As has been pointed out, the court’s ruling is that they are fantasy creatures (like monsters & robots) and the tax rate for dolls does not apply. As has also been pointed out, the laws on the books were archaic, and have since been changed to render the point moot.
  
  What surprises me is that the 1994 case took as long as 2003 to settle for good.
Bodhipaksa

Obvious question: are lawyers human?
noah django

life imitates art XD
BarBarSeven

Another question must be asked: When it comes to product imports, taxes are usually higher for some things that have a manufacturing base in the U.S. that needs to be protected right? One charges more for the Chinese widget because the U.S. widget deserves a protected market right? Okay, if you understand that then can someone explain to be what “human doll” manufacturer in the U.S. is being “protected” by this nonsense tax? Pretty much all manufacturing of toys/dolls happens overseas no matter who the originating client is nowadays. So this tax is just a pile of gravy for the U.S. tax office? WHY!!!!

We subsidize corn that nobody wants and protect “doll” manufacturers that no longer exist?
- http://datashade.livejournal.com/ DataShade
  
  Um, but all these taxes – the 12%, the 6.8% – are on *imports.* A lower tax on imported dolls can’t really be considered “protection.”
  - BarBarSeven
    
    The higher tax is on “human dolls” and the lower tax is on “toys.” The higher tax is intended to discourage the import of foreign “human dolls”, correct? Then what doll manufacturer in the U.S. is being protected by retaining the 12% tax?
    - Rob Butler
      
      None because as has already been mentioned multiple times, the tax distinction between toys and dolls as been repealed.
http://datashade.livejournal.com/ DataShade

Easy way to avoid paying a 12% import tax: manufacture on American soil. Fire all the 200k/yr lawyers, hire 5 blue-collar manufacturing guys at 40k apiece, give the lawyers first crack at the assembly line jobs just to be nice.
Daemonworks

Forget the lawyers – go after the idiots that passed a law basing tax rates on the SHAPE of a toy
- Blackcatflight
  
  …bet those were lawyers too…
- Paul Renault
  
  Soooo….if your dildo looks human, its duties are higher, but if it’s in the shape of a, say, dolphin, it’s OK…
Ipo

But are they happy?
el dueno

Credit for tax lawyers’ full employment act should be given to government lawyers who were able to set tax rates based on arbitrary distinctions.
pipenta

OMG you so totally missed the perfect headline here: Where Taxes meet TAXONOMY!!!

Because this is a taxonomy call, pure and simple.
jackbob

This also explains the GLARING omission of any Moira MacTaggart action figures.