San Francisco, California: Marriage Equality USA (MEUSA) deplores the ongoing moral and financial costs of denying marriage equality to same-sex couples, not only for the LGBT families directly affected, but for all American taxpayers who collectively pay a financial price for that discrimination.
“Each tax season, same-sex couples sit at their dining room tables and are forced to live a legal lie by checking „single‟ despite their decades together and then arbitrarily dividing up their joint household‟s income, expenses, and dependents,” says MEUSA President David Janis-Kitzmiller. “Then we write checks to the IRS for social security taxes, knowing that when we die our families will not even have access to any of the family „safety net‟ benefits provided in the form of social security survivor benefits, estate tax deferral, and other programs that we help fund through our tax dollars and that only heterosexual couples and their children will enjoy.”
“Even in California where domestic partners for the first time are submitting joint state returns, tax preparers and same-sex couples alike were confused on how to apply the tax laws when domestic partnerships aren‟t recognized by the federal government,” explains MEUSA Policy Director Pamela Brown. “Domestic partnerships create confusion that results in tangible costs and frustration to gay and lesbian couples who end up paying more in both taxes and tax preparation fees. This year, California domestic partners had to complete four tax returns – a „dummy” joint federal return so we could complete the joint state return and then two individual federal returns where we have to file as single. The surest way to end the confusion and uncertainty that domestic partnerships create is to allow gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry and we hope that the State Supreme Court will remedy this situation by recognizing that excluding same-sex couples from the right to marry violates our state Constitution.”
“A common misconception is that granting same-sex couples the freedom to marry would cost the government more money, but in fact it would save taxpayer dollars. Same-sex couples aren‟t the only ones paying for marriage discrimination, all taxpayers fund this discrimination which amounts to as much as $30 million for taxpayers in the state of California and $1 billion nationwide,” states Brown “citing two studies produced by the Congressional Budget Office (http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5559&sequence=0 and UCLA‟s Williams Institute http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/publications/16_Stan_L_&_Poly_Rev_197.pdf).”
>> This is an official press release from the National Press Center of Marriage Equality USA, a national organization whose mission is to secure legally recognized civil marriage equality for all, at the federal and state level, without regard to gender identity or sexual orientation.
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