Does "Income tax" count as a Curse or Bad Stuff that will remove "Chicken on your head"?

Question

If I choose to lose my headgear due to Income Tax, does that qualify as an event that would take the chicken with it?

The cards say:

Income Tax: Discard one item of your choice. Every other player must now discard an item or items, totaling at least as much value as the item you discarded. If they don't have enough to pay the full tax, they must discard all their items and lose a level.

Chicken on your head: -1 to all die rolls. Any Curse or Bad Stuff that removes your Headgear will take the chicken with it.

Answer 1

Yes.

The question boils down to: Does "that removes your Headgear" mean "that specifically instructs you to remove your Headgear", or does it mean "that causes you to remove your head gear".

Since no cards specifically instructs you to remove your headgear —they instruct you to lose it— I would favour the looser interpretation.

This is supported by a an official ruling (in reply to this).

Any Curse or Bad Stuff that removes your Headgear will take the chicken with it.

This means that any Curse or Bad Stuff that (a) specifically targets Headgear or (b) has the effect of removing the Headgear you are wearing, whether specifically targeting it or not, will remove the Chicken.

Since Income Tax is a Curse that has the effect of removing the Headgear you are wearing (even though it doesn't specifically targeting it), it will remove the Chicken.

Answer 2

There's a relevant SJG forum thread with a clear answer from the then-Munchkin line editor*, Andrew Hackard, here:

Any Curse or Bad Stuff that removes your Headgear will take the chicken with it.

This means that any Curse or Bad Stuff that (a) specifically targets Headgear or (b) has the effect of removing the Headgear you are wearing, whether specifically targeting it or not, will remove the Chicken

[...] This IS an official ruling.

In it he says that any Curse that "specifically targets headgear" and OR "has the effect of removing it" will take the Chicken.

Income Tax doesn't specifically target headgear, so you couldn't lose it on the first arm, but it is lost on the second arm (as is explicitly confirmed later in the linked thread in discussion of the seventh item).

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* He later left SJG, came back a few years later and became Munchkin Czar (a title of his own devising).

Answer 3

The way I read the Chicken rule you quoted, if you have to pay Income Tax and wind up naked and losing a level, that takes your headgear, hence removing the Chicken. However, as Malco pointed out, according to the official Munchkin rules, whoever owns the game has the correct interpretation in the case of a rules dispute.

The question arose in comments, however: what if the player has enough to pay the tax, but chooses to include his headgear as part of the payment?

To me, the Chicken is a curse of sorts, so getting rid of it shouldn't be that easy. Unless you can't make the tax amount without discarding your headgear, you can't choose to get rid of it. The Chicken only goes with the headgear "if a Curse or Bad Stuff removes it" -- not if you choose to fulfill a requirement by discarding your headgear.