Exporting tags: only the tag node, not it's children

In my system we have tags closely associated to content and to replicate that content effectively within a sharable package, I have to export some level of tags with the content so it can be replicated on other systems.

The problem is that we have many thousand tags with a deep hierarchy so when I filter out (in crx package manager) a high-level tag node, it's grabbing all of the children of the tag which significantly bloats the package size.

Is there any way to export only the tag desired and not it's children. I can do it with content by selecting the jcr:content node of the desired content page, but with tags there is only the tag node itself. Is there a way to spec this in the package filter to only take the tag and not recurse lower than the the spec in the filter?

The only work-around I've found is to take a child node of the desired node which is a somewhat shallower ancestry than others, this feels like a hack.

Thanks much!