Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement Payments?
February 12th, 2007TurboTax, as part of filing a California state tax return, just asked me if I was qualified for Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement Payments? Umm, what are the odds that anyone who was re-settled from the Ottoman empire is still paying taxes in California? Is there a story here?
5 Comments
February 13th, 2007 at 4:47 am
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/29/national/main596570.shtml
February 13th, 2007 at 7:46 am
This is for the benefit of victims of the Armenian Genocide who settled in California and their descendants, who won an insurance suit not too long ago.
http://www.turkuaz.us/past_det.php?newsId=97
February 13th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Copied from the state income tax filing instructions:
http://maviboncuk.blogspot.com/2006/04/ottoman-turkish-empire-settlement.html
February 13th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Drat, that makes sense, now I feel guilty for joking (all unknowing like) about genocide.
I preferred to think this was a tax code on the books dating back to the major relocations of the 14th century (though logically I assumed it had to do with the break up of the empire in the early 20th)
But thanks!
April 15th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
Thanks for posting this information! I too found this info on Turbo Tax and had similar thoughts about its origins. I am so glad someone had the correct info on this. It would have driven me crazy until I found out. Still you have to wonder at the choice of wording/labeling. Why not something that sounds like it applies to the current situation? Like: “Armenian Geniocide Victum Fund”. Perhaps this would make something in the tax code actually understandable, but that would violate all the known rules for writing the tax code in the first place.
For those of you into computer games, you might be interested in checking out “Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs. I love this game and on it there is the Ottoman Empire. So when I saw “Ottoman Turkish Empire Settlement”, I got a great laugh. I thought: What? is the CA gov’t now willing to pay me for playing a computer game? : )