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Taxing Our Patience

Evan Wolfson
April 7, 2008

In my work for the freedom to marry, I get asked often for a specific and universally understandable example of the inequality created by exclusion from marriage.  Here’s a good and timely example—taxes.  Same-sex couples and their families across the country are paying more in taxes and getting less because of their exclusion from marriage.   

In tough economic times, we all want to save money and protect our families, but, of course, everyone also looks to the government to provide a safety-net and address dislocations and crises (especially when the government helped cause them).  "Taxes," said Franklin Roosevelt, "are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society."   We all have an obligation to contribute, and, equally, the just expectation that our government and the tax system will treat us and our loved ones fairly.

Denied the freedom to marry, gay Americans are not just deprived of precious security and respect for their loving commitments.  They are also unfairly taxed.

Take a couple who've been together for, say, 8 years, and who've just added a child to their happy family.  They do the work of marriage in their lives every day, taking care of each other, cooking, doing laundry, changing diapers, and managing life's ups and downs.  But when Judy adds Rosa to her health insurance at work, because they are denied the freedom to marry Rosa has to pay taxes on that coverage.  One of the main protections that come to families through marriage is the ability to transfer money from one to the other, the ability to pool resources and function as a team without adverse tax treatment.  Judy and Rosa and their kids are denied that benefit of marriage – and it costs them.

• Same-sex couples pay at least $1,000 more a year in taxes just for health insurance coverage, that’s $178 million each year collectively for these couples across the country.  That doesn’t even include the added cost to the employers.  There’s a whole study from UCLA's Williams Institute on just this injustice.

What about your neighbor down the street?  After nearly 40 committed years together, Jorge's partner just died.  They shared a home, a life, children, and grandchildren.  The house was in his partner's name, and now amid his grief he also must pay debilitating inheritance taxes and property assessments that he would have been spared had he and Kevin been allowed to marry.  Grieving the loss of the love of his life, Jorge is now about to lose his home, too.    

A family in Connecticut shared this story: Gina and Jane have been together for over 10 years and adopted two children.  They have a civil union (the best they could do, since Connecticut still won't let them just get married).  They file taxes jointly at the state level, but then have to compile three filings for the federal level, two separately and one joint just to act as a worksheet for figuring out state taxes.  Each year they try and figure out which of them should claim their children at the federal level since they can’t file jointly.  Why is government putting obstacles in the path of families like this, seeking to take care of each other?

Just last week, the Hartford Courant ran a story on how even many tax preparers don’t have the software to allow couples to file with a civil union.  The result was a cost 4 times more to file their taxes:

The giant tax preparer was willing to prepare the couple's taxes at one of its offices for $199.80 — $155 more than the online price…H&R Block has managed to rewrite its software to handle gay marriages in Massachusetts, but not so with civil unions in Connecticut or Vermont [.]

That the tax preparer software was able to understand marriages in Massachusetts and not civil unions in Connecticut underscores the reality that while civil unions and domestic partnerships do offer some protections to couples and their families, they are vastly unequal. As the Hartford Courant opined following the report of this inequality:

Meanwhile, the tax hassle common to all such households reinforces the shortcomings of civil unions and debunks claims that they are an acceptable equivalent to marriage.

For tangible as well as intangible reasons, civil unions don't work, and are no just substitute for the freedom to marry itself.

Responsible citizens simply trying to take care of their families and pay their taxes should not be discriminated based on whom they love.  We can ask candidates for office what they are going to do about this and the other pressures on America's working families, and if the candidates seem stumped on how to treat people fairly, just hand them this: Candidates' Guide on How to Support Marriage Equality and Get Elected (pdf)

Will Rogers once remarked that, "The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."  The truth is we're not going to get our country back on track until we work together to strengthen all families and thus build stronger communities for us all.  That means speaking out.

You can make a difference by sending this post to 5 friends, opening a conversation on why you care about marriage equality, not only as a matter of fairness, but as a matter of economic justice.

And don’t forget to file your taxes.