Pat Cain, tax law expert extraordinaire, shared an astonishing piece of news on her blog yesterday. The IRS Office of Chief Counsel has written a letter indicating that a different-sex couple in an Illinois civil union is considered married for purposes of filing a tax return at the federal level. The letter says nothing about same-sex couples, presumably because DOMA blocks treating a same-sex couple as married under federal law. (I've wondered sometimes if the federal government could recognize a civil union or domestic partnership because it isn't a marriage, which is what DOMA addresses. But I'll leave that aside for now...)
Here is what's astonishing about this. One of the reasons different-sex couples enter such a status instead of getting married is to avoid the federal consequences of marriage. For example, a divorced woman collecting social security retirement benefits on the basis of her former marriage loses those benefits if she remarries. Presumably this is the reason that some of the states that allow different sex couples into DPs limit it to couples where one person is at least 62 (the minimum age for a nondisabled person to collect social security retirement benefits). But some states (Illinois, Hawaii, Nevada) as well as DC allow all different sex couples into the status. And DC allows two people who live together "in a committed, familial relationship" to register as DPs.
As Pat Cain notes, this one letter is not "the law." And it only applies to filing status. If it does become the policy of the IRS it is hard to see how it could apply to filing status and not to other tax code provisions, and then it is hard to see how the IRS could consider a couple married without the Social Security Administration doing the same, which is where retirement and death benefits come in.
If this does become "the law" it has a special significance for me. I'm in a DC registered domestic partnership and, as anyone who reads this blog or hears me speak knows, I do not want to get married. But I would benefit from filing my federal tax return as "married." So...if DOMA is repealed, a ruling consistent with this recent IRS letter would mean I could stay in my DP and still file my federal taxes as married. Cool! It would also allow others to choose "civil union" or "domestic partnership" as an alternative to marriage without federal penalty. That might make it too good to be true...So I'm not holding my breath!
Showing posts with label tax law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tax law. Show all posts
IRS nods towards surprising interpretation of civil union/domestic partnership...you may be "married" for tax law purposes
Labels:
tax law
Oregon Tax Court ruling points the way towards compulsory marriage
Last month the Oregon Tax Court ruled on the constitutionality of an administrative rule allowing same-sex but not different-sex partners to exempt from state tax the imputed value of their domestic partner health insurance benefits.
The challenge was filed by Yvonne Haldeman, a taxpayer with an unmarried different-sex partner who, in 2007, tried to subtract $5313 from her gross income because that was the imputed value, for federal tax purposes, of the health insurance provided by her employer for her partner. (The details of her specific situation are in the opinion of a tax court magistrate who heard the case in 2008).
Haldeman argued that the rule violated the Oregon Constitution's privileges and immunities clause which "forbids inequality of privileges or immunities not available upon the same terms...to any class of citizens." She argued that the class of citizens of which she was a member was unmarried different-sex partners. The background for this issue is the 1998 Tanner case, in which the Oregon appeals court found it unconstitutional to grant health insurance benefits to the spouse of a married public employee but not to a same-sex partner who could not marry the employee. The Oregon Attorney General subsequently concluded that it would violate the state constitution to permit a spouse, but not a same-sex domestic partner, to subtract the value of the health insurance benefit from gross income for tax purposes. The administrative rule at issue defines "domestic partner" as someone under no legal disability to marry the other person but for the fact that each is the same sex and who would marry that person if Oregon law permitted it.
Haldeman argued that the class for purposes of constitutional analysis was unmarried different-sex partners vs unmarried same-sex partners. The Tax Court rejected this, specifically because the rule applied only to those same-sex partners who would marry if they could. Therefore, the Tax Court found the class to be married vs unmarried persons. Tanner found sexual orientation to be a suspect class. It also determined that immutability was not an absolute requirement for suspect class status; rather a class is suspect if its characteristics are "historically regarded as defining distinct, socially recognized groups that have been the subject of adverse social or political stereotyping or prejudice." The Tax Court then determined that marital status was not a suspect class and that neither single status nor marital status has resulted in routine targeting for adverse treatment over the years. The opinion states that Haldeman did not argue that her class had historically suffered prejudice or stereotyping. Rather she argued that the very rule she challenged put her through "adverse social and political prejudice," and the Tax Court disregarded this, stating that she "does not elaborate on this assertion, does not contribute any evidence of her assertion, and does not cite to any case law supporting an argument of mistreatment of unmarried persons."
As a result of the above, Haldeman was not in a suspect class. Applying the rational basis ("any conceivable state of facts") test, the Tax Court found that the rational basis was avoiding the litigation that would likely have followed after Tanner had the state continued to include the value of the benefit in the gross income of an employee with a same-sex domestic partner. The Tax Court did not adopt the reasoning of the magistrate in his 2008 ruling that "it was rational for the legislature to assume that the financial benefit inuring from the exemption provided an incentive for people to marry." Yet the reasoning it did use seems not credible to me. How can the purpose of a rule be avoiding litigation, as opposed to some substantive benefit provided by the rule? As it turned out, the rule did not avoid litigation; after all, Haldeman sued.
I applaud the Tax Court's implicit (unfortunately) rejection of promoting marriage as the legitimate interest furthered by the distinction in the rule. But I question the part of its reasoning that disregards precisely the prejudice and stereotyping that unmarried couples have historically suffered. Once immutability is not a prerequisite for determining a suspect class, there is a strong evidence of the longstanding prejudice against unmarried couples.
Of course this issue feeds into the argument I have been making over many years. The arguments for access to marriage for same-sex couples glorify marriage. They diverge from the arguments made in the past that marriage should not determine who gets benefits. In 2000, Lambda Legal filed a friend of the court brief in 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Milagros Irizarry, a heterosexual city employee denied access to domestic partner health benefits available to same-sex couples. Irizarry lost, but Lambda Legal entered the case even though gay and lesbian employees were receiving the benefits. Lambda Legal took a position against making marriage compulsory for straight couples. I doubt the organization would have assisted Yvonne Haldeman in her case in the Oregon Tax Court.
In fact, Lambda Legal is not representing the different-sex domestic partners who lost their benefits in Arizona. You could read all of Lambda's publicity about the case, Collins v. Brewer, without ever realizing that different-sex domestic partners were receiving benefits and that those benefits were also terminated. In fact, this Lambda press release describes Arizona's action as "eliminating health benefits for gay state employees" when all state employees lost their domestic partner benefits. The University of Arizona recently notified its employees that a court injunction issued in July does not prevent the termination of benefits to different-sex partners.
The fight for domestic partner benefits started in the 1980's as a fight against mandating marriage before an employee could protect the health of his or her family. All the early domestic partner benefits (think The Village Voice and Ben & Jerry's) were open to unmarried couples of any gender. A decade ago, Lambda Legal endorsed that position. Apparently it no longer does.
I'm reminded all the time by leaders in the marriage equality movement that they are fighting for the choice to marry. And I consistently reply that there is no "choice" when marriage is the only way to obtain economic protections for a family unit. Both Haldeman and Collins v. Brewer prove my point.
The challenge was filed by Yvonne Haldeman, a taxpayer with an unmarried different-sex partner who, in 2007, tried to subtract $5313 from her gross income because that was the imputed value, for federal tax purposes, of the health insurance provided by her employer for her partner. (The details of her specific situation are in the opinion of a tax court magistrate who heard the case in 2008).
Haldeman argued that the rule violated the Oregon Constitution's privileges and immunities clause which "forbids inequality of privileges or immunities not available upon the same terms...to any class of citizens." She argued that the class of citizens of which she was a member was unmarried different-sex partners. The background for this issue is the 1998 Tanner case, in which the Oregon appeals court found it unconstitutional to grant health insurance benefits to the spouse of a married public employee but not to a same-sex partner who could not marry the employee. The Oregon Attorney General subsequently concluded that it would violate the state constitution to permit a spouse, but not a same-sex domestic partner, to subtract the value of the health insurance benefit from gross income for tax purposes. The administrative rule at issue defines "domestic partner" as someone under no legal disability to marry the other person but for the fact that each is the same sex and who would marry that person if Oregon law permitted it.
Haldeman argued that the class for purposes of constitutional analysis was unmarried different-sex partners vs unmarried same-sex partners. The Tax Court rejected this, specifically because the rule applied only to those same-sex partners who would marry if they could. Therefore, the Tax Court found the class to be married vs unmarried persons. Tanner found sexual orientation to be a suspect class. It also determined that immutability was not an absolute requirement for suspect class status; rather a class is suspect if its characteristics are "historically regarded as defining distinct, socially recognized groups that have been the subject of adverse social or political stereotyping or prejudice." The Tax Court then determined that marital status was not a suspect class and that neither single status nor marital status has resulted in routine targeting for adverse treatment over the years. The opinion states that Haldeman did not argue that her class had historically suffered prejudice or stereotyping. Rather she argued that the very rule she challenged put her through "adverse social and political prejudice," and the Tax Court disregarded this, stating that she "does not elaborate on this assertion, does not contribute any evidence of her assertion, and does not cite to any case law supporting an argument of mistreatment of unmarried persons."
As a result of the above, Haldeman was not in a suspect class. Applying the rational basis ("any conceivable state of facts") test, the Tax Court found that the rational basis was avoiding the litigation that would likely have followed after Tanner had the state continued to include the value of the benefit in the gross income of an employee with a same-sex domestic partner. The Tax Court did not adopt the reasoning of the magistrate in his 2008 ruling that "it was rational for the legislature to assume that the financial benefit inuring from the exemption provided an incentive for people to marry." Yet the reasoning it did use seems not credible to me. How can the purpose of a rule be avoiding litigation, as opposed to some substantive benefit provided by the rule? As it turned out, the rule did not avoid litigation; after all, Haldeman sued.
I applaud the Tax Court's implicit (unfortunately) rejection of promoting marriage as the legitimate interest furthered by the distinction in the rule. But I question the part of its reasoning that disregards precisely the prejudice and stereotyping that unmarried couples have historically suffered. Once immutability is not a prerequisite for determining a suspect class, there is a strong evidence of the longstanding prejudice against unmarried couples.
Of course this issue feeds into the argument I have been making over many years. The arguments for access to marriage for same-sex couples glorify marriage. They diverge from the arguments made in the past that marriage should not determine who gets benefits. In 2000, Lambda Legal filed a friend of the court brief in 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in support of Milagros Irizarry, a heterosexual city employee denied access to domestic partner health benefits available to same-sex couples. Irizarry lost, but Lambda Legal entered the case even though gay and lesbian employees were receiving the benefits. Lambda Legal took a position against making marriage compulsory for straight couples. I doubt the organization would have assisted Yvonne Haldeman in her case in the Oregon Tax Court.
In fact, Lambda Legal is not representing the different-sex domestic partners who lost their benefits in Arizona. You could read all of Lambda's publicity about the case, Collins v. Brewer, without ever realizing that different-sex domestic partners were receiving benefits and that those benefits were also terminated. In fact, this Lambda press release describes Arizona's action as "eliminating health benefits for gay state employees" when all state employees lost their domestic partner benefits. The University of Arizona recently notified its employees that a court injunction issued in July does not prevent the termination of benefits to different-sex partners.
The fight for domestic partner benefits started in the 1980's as a fight against mandating marriage before an employee could protect the health of his or her family. All the early domestic partner benefits (think The Village Voice and Ben & Jerry's) were open to unmarried couples of any gender. A decade ago, Lambda Legal endorsed that position. Apparently it no longer does.
I'm reminded all the time by leaders in the marriage equality movement that they are fighting for the choice to marry. And I consistently reply that there is no "choice" when marriage is the only way to obtain economic protections for a family unit. Both Haldeman and Collins v. Brewer prove my point.
Understanding the adoption tax credit for second-parent adoptions
I think everyone knows that marriage affects the amount of taxes we pay; sometimes we pay more as married couples and sometimes less. Tax savings is not a good reason to support same-sex marriage because, among other things, for equal earning couples they will pay more as a married couple than as two single people. (The marriage "bonus" subsidizes families with one high income earner; the marriage "penalty" hurts families with two relatively equal earners).I'd like to see taxation based on individual status not marital status, as many countries do, but that's another story....
Well, if you are doing a second-parent adoption, from a federal tax standpoint it is definitely better not to be married. That's because the adoption tax credit allows a person who adopts a child to claim a credit that can be as high as about $12,000, and this credit greatly reduces the expense of the second-parent adoption because it applies to the cost of both a home study and legal fees. The credit is not available for step-parent adoptions. Since federal law does not recognize a same-sex couple as married, even if they are married under state law, their second-parent adoption is not a step-parent adoption and the adopting parent can claim the credit. The credit is also available if the couple jointly adopts a child that is not the child of either of them. Unfortunately, it is not available for adoptions connected to surrogacy arrangements, so a second-parent adoption by the partner of a man who is a biological father of a child born through surrogacy cannot claim the credit.
There is also no tax credit for obtaining a parentage order. In a jurisdiction that confers parentage on a nonbiological parent through a statute, without an adoption, (like our DC parentage statute), it makes more conceptual sense to obtain an order of parentage from the court; the nonbio mom is already a parent and so the court order confirms that and makes it subject to respect in other states as court judgment. As I say repeatedly, a mother should not have to adopt her own child! When considering your options, however, the fact that a second-parent adoption will be partly subsidized by the adoption tax credit may figure in your thinking, so be sure to discuss it with your lawyer.
Here is an article that explains the rule in great detail and in as close to plain English as you'll likely find in an article about tax law. Plus it's great to see our families explicitly included in the analysis in a very matter of fact way. Thanks to Florida attorney Elizabeth Schwartz for bringing this article to my attention.
Well, if you are doing a second-parent adoption, from a federal tax standpoint it is definitely better not to be married. That's because the adoption tax credit allows a person who adopts a child to claim a credit that can be as high as about $12,000, and this credit greatly reduces the expense of the second-parent adoption because it applies to the cost of both a home study and legal fees. The credit is not available for step-parent adoptions. Since federal law does not recognize a same-sex couple as married, even if they are married under state law, their second-parent adoption is not a step-parent adoption and the adopting parent can claim the credit. The credit is also available if the couple jointly adopts a child that is not the child of either of them. Unfortunately, it is not available for adoptions connected to surrogacy arrangements, so a second-parent adoption by the partner of a man who is a biological father of a child born through surrogacy cannot claim the credit.
There is also no tax credit for obtaining a parentage order. In a jurisdiction that confers parentage on a nonbiological parent through a statute, without an adoption, (like our DC parentage statute), it makes more conceptual sense to obtain an order of parentage from the court; the nonbio mom is already a parent and so the court order confirms that and makes it subject to respect in other states as court judgment. As I say repeatedly, a mother should not have to adopt her own child! When considering your options, however, the fact that a second-parent adoption will be partly subsidized by the adoption tax credit may figure in your thinking, so be sure to discuss it with your lawyer.
Here is an article that explains the rule in great detail and in as close to plain English as you'll likely find in an article about tax law. Plus it's great to see our families explicitly included in the analysis in a very matter of fact way. Thanks to Florida attorney Elizabeth Schwartz for bringing this article to my attention.
The cost of being a gay couple... the New York Times tells just one part of the story
You know I'm going to respond to any article that says:
"Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage."
Well, that's what the article in today's New York Times concludes. It purports to be a study based on the differences between a married heterosexual couple and a same-sex couple (who, if married in their state, is still not married for federal law purposes).
So let's get the first obvious problem with this article out of the way by rephrasing the study's findings as follows:
Nearly all the extra costs that unmarried couples face would be erased if the federal government stopped privileging marriage over other relationships.
My formulation is no less accurate than the conclusion in the Times article. But if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail, and if you're an advocate for same-sex marriage every problem looks like it's caused by denial of access to marriage. I just don't see it that way.
Here's an example. The article points out that when an employer provides health insurance to a same-sex partner it is taxed, while spousal coverage is not. True. But suggesting that the problem here is that same-sex couples can't marry misses the larger point. Why should any employer-provided health benefits be taxed? Salt Lake City allows an employee to cover anyone s/he lives with in an interdependent relationship. Many employers cover both same-sex and unmarried different-sex partners. In all those situations, the benefit is taxed. Spousal coverage gets special treatment. It shouldn't. A solution that ended that special treatment would reduce the "high cost of being a gay couple" as much as allowing same-sex couples to marry, and would be a better policy choice because it would encourage employers to recognize the actual families of their employees -- married or not.
Meanwhile, the article does not entirely ignore the fact that marriage helps those straight families who look like the male breadwinner and stay-at-home mother model that drives both our tax and social security system. So it would mostly help those same-sex couples who also have one high and one low income earner. The authors acknowledge that for an equal earning couple their social security payments don't vary depending on whether or not they are married. What they fail to mention is that many observers believe the current set-up fails to reflect modern family life and should be reformed...for straight married couples. Taking the current system as a given misses the opportunity to highlight the views of those who think it unconscionable that a family in which one person has earned most of the money pays less into social security and gets more out of it than a couple who have greater parity. Here's an example of one paper by the Urban Institute. They actually have an entire project about making social security more equitable.
Then there's this problem. The article posits the hypothetical couple having a joint income of $140,000 a year. This perpetuates the myth of gay affluence, something roundly debunked by the careful research of the Williams Institute. And for poor same-sex couples, they are, like different-sex unmarried couples, sometimes better off not being married (the Earned Income Tax Credit is one example.) In fact, you'd never know it from this article that lawyers who specialize in elder law often advise their heterosexual couple clients not to marry. If one partner needs to spend down all assets to be eligible for medicaid nursing home care, the other can keep all of his or her assets if the couple isn't married. If they are married, they must spend down almost all of both of their assets.
But no partner in the hypothetical couples used as examples in the Times article needs nursing home care. Lucky them.
"Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage."
Well, that's what the article in today's New York Times concludes. It purports to be a study based on the differences between a married heterosexual couple and a same-sex couple (who, if married in their state, is still not married for federal law purposes).
So let's get the first obvious problem with this article out of the way by rephrasing the study's findings as follows:
Nearly all the extra costs that unmarried couples face would be erased if the federal government stopped privileging marriage over other relationships.
My formulation is no less accurate than the conclusion in the Times article. But if you're a hammer everything looks like a nail, and if you're an advocate for same-sex marriage every problem looks like it's caused by denial of access to marriage. I just don't see it that way.
Here's an example. The article points out that when an employer provides health insurance to a same-sex partner it is taxed, while spousal coverage is not. True. But suggesting that the problem here is that same-sex couples can't marry misses the larger point. Why should any employer-provided health benefits be taxed? Salt Lake City allows an employee to cover anyone s/he lives with in an interdependent relationship. Many employers cover both same-sex and unmarried different-sex partners. In all those situations, the benefit is taxed. Spousal coverage gets special treatment. It shouldn't. A solution that ended that special treatment would reduce the "high cost of being a gay couple" as much as allowing same-sex couples to marry, and would be a better policy choice because it would encourage employers to recognize the actual families of their employees -- married or not.
Meanwhile, the article does not entirely ignore the fact that marriage helps those straight families who look like the male breadwinner and stay-at-home mother model that drives both our tax and social security system. So it would mostly help those same-sex couples who also have one high and one low income earner. The authors acknowledge that for an equal earning couple their social security payments don't vary depending on whether or not they are married. What they fail to mention is that many observers believe the current set-up fails to reflect modern family life and should be reformed...for straight married couples. Taking the current system as a given misses the opportunity to highlight the views of those who think it unconscionable that a family in which one person has earned most of the money pays less into social security and gets more out of it than a couple who have greater parity. Here's an example of one paper by the Urban Institute. They actually have an entire project about making social security more equitable.
Then there's this problem. The article posits the hypothetical couple having a joint income of $140,000 a year. This perpetuates the myth of gay affluence, something roundly debunked by the careful research of the Williams Institute. And for poor same-sex couples, they are, like different-sex unmarried couples, sometimes better off not being married (the Earned Income Tax Credit is one example.) In fact, you'd never know it from this article that lawyers who specialize in elder law often advise their heterosexual couple clients not to marry. If one partner needs to spend down all assets to be eligible for medicaid nursing home care, the other can keep all of his or her assets if the couple isn't married. If they are married, they must spend down almost all of both of their assets.
But no partner in the hypothetical couples used as examples in the Times article needs nursing home care. Lucky them.
Labels:
elders,
marriage equality,
Social Security,
tax law
How about the whole story on taxes and same-sex married couples?
Gary Gates does amazing work. He is singlehandedly responsible for the wealth of knowledge we have about same-sex couples from census data. I turn to him for data for my own work. But his co-authored Huffington Post piece today doesn’t tell the whole story about same-sex couples and taxes.
What he writes about is the unfairness of treating married same-sex couples as unmarried for purposes of federal law. Unlike GLAD’s lawsuit challenging DOMA, he steers clear of examples of same-sex couples who pay more federal income tax because they are treated as single individuals. I’m figuring that’s because he knows that for close-to- equal-earning same-sex couples, they do better being considered unmarried under federal law. The married couples who pay less in federal income tax are those who are the single-earner model, mirroring the husband-at-work and wife-at-home marriage that lawmakers had in mind when they enacted our tax code. I find it unjust that the tax system rewards such families at the expense of equal earners, whether those couples are gay or straight.
Gary Gates does mention Social Security. As I explained in an earlier post about the GLAD lawsuit, our system of Social Security survivors benefits also favors the traditional, gendered model of a single, or at least one primary, income earner. Dual income married couples pay more into the system and get less out over the course of both their lifetimes than the traditional, gendered model. Race-based critiques of Social Security point out that since Black married couples are more likely to both work and to have more equal incomes, the current system disadvantages them.
What should the gay rights movement do? Rather than complain about our lack of access to a set of laws that benefits only some members of our community, how about we work with other groups who want to reform family taxation and Social Security rules for everyone? I wrote about this last year. I'd love to have something different to report for tax day 2010.
What he writes about is the unfairness of treating married same-sex couples as unmarried for purposes of federal law. Unlike GLAD’s lawsuit challenging DOMA, he steers clear of examples of same-sex couples who pay more federal income tax because they are treated as single individuals. I’m figuring that’s because he knows that for close-to- equal-earning same-sex couples, they do better being considered unmarried under federal law. The married couples who pay less in federal income tax are those who are the single-earner model, mirroring the husband-at-work and wife-at-home marriage that lawmakers had in mind when they enacted our tax code. I find it unjust that the tax system rewards such families at the expense of equal earners, whether those couples are gay or straight.
Gary Gates does mention Social Security. As I explained in an earlier post about the GLAD lawsuit, our system of Social Security survivors benefits also favors the traditional, gendered model of a single, or at least one primary, income earner. Dual income married couples pay more into the system and get less out over the course of both their lifetimes than the traditional, gendered model. Race-based critiques of Social Security point out that since Black married couples are more likely to both work and to have more equal incomes, the current system disadvantages them.
What should the gay rights movement do? Rather than complain about our lack of access to a set of laws that benefits only some members of our community, how about we work with other groups who want to reform family taxation and Social Security rules for everyone? I wrote about this last year. I'd love to have something different to report for tax day 2010.
Labels:
consequences of marrying,
Social Security,
tax law
The hidden inequalities behind the anti-DOMA litigation
I don't like the Defense of Marriage Act. It's an anti-gay measure, pure and simple. As a political matter, GLAD's lawsuit seeking to overturn one part of the statute on Equal Protection grounds may turn out to be brave, or it may turn out to be reckless. But I've got a complaint whichever way it goes.
The equality denied some of the plaintiffs in GLAD's case is the equality to be treated as married under federal income tax and Social Security law. But those laws hurt only some same-sex couples -- those in which one partner earned all or most of the income. Equal-earning heterosexual married couples also lose out on the "marriage bonus" that our tax and Social Security laws grant couples who reflect the traditional gender norms in which the husband earns all or most of the income. Because African-American married couples are more likely than their white counterparts to be equal earners, they too get treated unfairly by a Social Security system explicitly designed to benefit the male-head-of-household family.
So this means that GLAD had to hand-pick its married same-sex couples for this lawsuit. Those with equal earners were not worse off with respect to Social Security benefits than their heterosexually married counterparts. And those with equal earners were probably better off for income tax purposes that they were treated as single under federal law. Those couples would have been lousy plaintiffs.
There has been advocacy on behalf of reforming Social Security laws to deal more justly with American families. I mean how fair is it exactly that a woman who raises two children on her own, working full time, is likely to wind up with less in Social Security benefits than a stay-at-home wife with a wealthy husband? or that equal-earner couples actually subsidize the benefits that go to couples that adhere to gendered norms? Reform efforts haven't gotten very far, and the reason is that knocking families with stay-at-home moms off of their privileged perch is fraught with political peril -- maybe more political peril that trying to repeal DOMA.
But I'm not happy spending the political capital of the gay rights movement to replicate within our community the inequalities that plague so many heterosexual couples.
The equality denied some of the plaintiffs in GLAD's case is the equality to be treated as married under federal income tax and Social Security law. But those laws hurt only some same-sex couples -- those in which one partner earned all or most of the income. Equal-earning heterosexual married couples also lose out on the "marriage bonus" that our tax and Social Security laws grant couples who reflect the traditional gender norms in which the husband earns all or most of the income. Because African-American married couples are more likely than their white counterparts to be equal earners, they too get treated unfairly by a Social Security system explicitly designed to benefit the male-head-of-household family.
So this means that GLAD had to hand-pick its married same-sex couples for this lawsuit. Those with equal earners were not worse off with respect to Social Security benefits than their heterosexually married counterparts. And those with equal earners were probably better off for income tax purposes that they were treated as single under federal law. Those couples would have been lousy plaintiffs.
There has been advocacy on behalf of reforming Social Security laws to deal more justly with American families. I mean how fair is it exactly that a woman who raises two children on her own, working full time, is likely to wind up with less in Social Security benefits than a stay-at-home wife with a wealthy husband? or that equal-earner couples actually subsidize the benefits that go to couples that adhere to gendered norms? Reform efforts haven't gotten very far, and the reason is that knocking families with stay-at-home moms off of their privileged perch is fraught with political peril -- maybe more political peril that trying to repeal DOMA.
But I'm not happy spending the political capital of the gay rights movement to replicate within our community the inequalities that plague so many heterosexual couples.
Labels:
marriage equality,
Social Security,
tax law
TAX TIME -- NOT A REASON TO SUPPORT MARRIAGE EQUALITY
There's much that's wrong with our income tax treatment of families. But when marriage equality advocates argue that same-sex couples face tax disadvantages because they can't marry, they don't tell the whole story. Marriage reduces taxes for couples that have one wage earner, or two wage earners who earn vastly different incomes. In other words, the "traditional" husband-as-wage-earner, wife-as-homemaker family is greatly advantaged by our tax rules. Their "bonus" for being married costs the government $30 billion. When two equal wage earners marry, they pay more taxes. So same-sex couples who marry would simply become a part of this unfair system; those with one primary wage-earner would benefit and those with two more equal wage-earners would lose out. Also, for low income parents, marriage can deprive them of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); low income gay and lesbian parents who marry in Massachusestts should be grateful that the federal government doesn't consider them married!
Of course these are not arguments AGAINST allowing same-sex couples to marry. It's just that our inequitable income tax system is not a reason to support same-sex marriage either. We need to reduce the significance of marriage in the income tax system. The Alternatives to Marriage Project has the best proposals for this.
Of course these are not arguments AGAINST allowing same-sex couples to marry. It's just that our inequitable income tax system is not a reason to support same-sex marriage either. We need to reduce the significance of marriage in the income tax system. The Alternatives to Marriage Project has the best proposals for this.
Labels:
groups that value all families,
tax law
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