With respect to finances, it is more of an incentive for insurance purposes. With respect to kids, it is an incentive to more easily leave a child's care entrusted to your partner. Until recently, quite often, there were no real tax breaks for married couples. Oftentimes, a married couple would get back more money by filing separately.
One of the things that I found interesting when I worked for Apple is that they extended health benefits to same sex partners if the lived together. Just be gay and prove you live in the same place. That's it. Now, if you were opposite sex and you lived together, you had to be common law married in your state before you qualified. In fact, the rumor was that the reason Apple did not build it's facilities where the Motorola plant is in North Austin (believe Apple still owns the land) is because the county that the land was in (not Travis... just north, forget the name...) would not give them a tax break because of Apple's same sex policy. Then again that was a rumor and could be bull. Oh and I got a much bigger return filing married, especially since my wife didn't work.
I worked on a benefits task force (as part of union bargaining with my employer) recently, and we got our university to offer full benefits to "domestic partners" ("legally domiciled adults" or LDA to be specific, which is even more inclusive). I'll speak to non-financial issues since bobrek already hit those. DCkid, you can do all sorts of paperwork, with wills and joint tax returns and all of that. But there are lots of little things that come automatically with marriage that don't show up with other state-santioned unions. For instance, say your partner is in an awful wreck (heaven forbid), and you go to the emergency room. If your partner is your *wife*, you can automatically gain access to her and speak with her doctors, even about important decisions. If she is just your legally declared partner (varies from state to state in terminology), you have to just sit in the waiting room until she is conscious, post-surgery, whatever. So no matter how much certain people tell you that gay people could have domestic partnership and it would be "equivalent" to marriage, it's just not true. Beyond that, I think that gay people want to have their relationships accepted at this basic level. I'll reiterate that a three-strikes law would be the best thing for the institution of marriage, (and it would save all the future wives of Rush Limbaugh ).
Batman, even Chomsky (who usually says there is only one party the Business party) advocates voting for Kerry in the swing states. So you just gotta ask yourself- What Would Chomsky Do?
Yeah, when one spouse doesn't work or makes very little money, there can be quite a tax benefit over the scenario where the high-earning spouse had to file separately. But there was, for a long time, something of a penalty for married couples who both worked. Congress has been tinkering with the tax code to get rid of the marriage penalty, but the goal is these actions has been to equalize the tax burden for married couples vs. the same couple if they were single, rather than to create a new benefit. With so many companies adding "domestic partner" benefits over the past ten years or so, I'm not sure there is a significant financial benefit for homosexuals to get married in most cases.
Here's basically what I see realistically happening. I liken it to contraception, which I personally would never endorse or support, but which I can't see being illegal. I think the definition of marriage will stay the same and civil unions will be the norm. I don't think there is anything less equal in a civil union, and I really don't see how they can be legally denied, even if I am not in support of them (nuance?).
see my post above, twhy77. To the best of my knowledge, a civil union will *not* get you into the emergency room when a loved one is unconscious. There are other, similar little details that can be quite important, including protection of conversations. The *only* way the content of a private conversation can be protected during a trial is if the conversation happened between a *married* couple. Even the content of conversations between a mother and child can be brought into court without recourse. Never mind those between a "civil union." It is indeed a "less equal" arrangement, for what that's worth.
Which didn't really exist in most cases anyway, and when it did, was the necessary mathematical consequence of having a progressive income tax system, and which has since been repealed. http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Taxes/P48908.asp "Marriage Penalty" and "Death Tax" are GOP slogans, generated expressly to generate opposition thereto. Marriage was a tax haven before they got rid of the so-called marriage penalty, and remains such today.
Sorry, I can't let this one slide by without asking... are you against contraception no matter what? Like even for people that are married?
I'm not sure about that, Sam, for people who make roughly the same amount of money. I've gone over and over this with our CPA for sure, since Mrs. G-Gori and I are such unromantic, money-grubbing aliens.
Well, the fact that you were unable to take advantage of the marriage tax breaks because you have failed to find employment that is commensurate with your gigantic intellect, and hence earn the same as your civil union partner Karas (which, as far as I can tell, is a negliglible sum from appeaaring at Japanese manga conventions) is of no consequence to me. Of course, had you not had your tenure revoked after your infamous working paper: "Theories in Biotransformation of a Random Lorry Driver into a Giant Monster that Consumes Pollution in order to further Me Exerting Dominion over the Planet Earth People that are Stupid and I Hate", we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?
your mean! But I did not civilly unionize Karas. There is more space apes than your mind can compress!
Well, even the article that Sam linked to said 42% of married couples paid more than they would have if they had stayed single. While true that "most" (51% of married couples) received a marriage "bonus" doesn't mean that there weren't a lot of married couples who did pay a penalty in their Federal Income Taxes. I don't know how something that affected 42% of married couples can be characterized as simply a GOP slogan.
On behalf of this BBS, I request that this stupid geek language cease immediately. This type of one-on-one exchange belongs in a private email, it is not to be used to hog Clutch's bandwidth for your inside jokes. It has gone on too long. End it.
Because, it implies that its a massive "penalty" that was some speical, draconian tax, intentionally dreamed up to screw with married people. It's not, not at all. It's a mathematical function of having a graduated income tax structure and because of the way deductions are figured. You reduce the individual deduction for married people because they have shared expenses for housing, etc...but it's not really a "penalty" per se, it just means that the deduction they get for autonomous consumption is lower because their amount is lower -- in other words, the amount of "penalty" they pay -- or deduction that they don't get, is made up for in other areas. EDIT: Taking this out further, now the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Married people now get as large an individual deduction as singles -- and I believe that this affects 100% of all singles, far larger than the married people (what was it, 42%?) Accordingly, if I were an irresponsible, screw balanced budgets, anti-tax zealot, I would dream up a catchy slogan for this phenomenon, and call it, "The Swinging Singles Penalty!", which I could say with an even sounder logical footing than saying "marriage penalty" because at least with the marriage penalty, the lack of as large a deduction is theoretically made up for in other savings for marrieds. You can't say the same due to the dastardly "Swinging singles penalty", which is more unfair and affects a greater percentage of people in its category. Ho ho ho, it looks like my little Japanese scifi jokes not only amuse me, but annoy Trader JohJi --- dos aves!
how many companies have domestic partner benefits? maybe less than 0.1% how about social security benefits? "The Social Security retirement benefit a person is entitled to receive is based on his or her earnings history. However, an individual who is married is also entitled to receive benefits based on his or her spouse’s earnings history under some circumstances." "A portion of all Social Security tax payments goes towards survivors’ insurance, which provides support to surviving spouses of heterosexual marriages. At present, there are about 5 million widows and widowers receiving monthly Social Security benefits based on their deceased spouse’s income history. Everyone who pays Social Security taxes, including single individuals and unmarried couples, contributes toward this benefit." from: http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/EconomicCosts.pdf this is a good comparison chart of what's at stake here: http://www.thetaskforce.org/marriagecenter/FightingFor.pdf
So, your problem is really with the term "marriage penalty" rather than the effect itself. I mean, people can live together and cut their expenses for housing and not be hit with higher taxes because of it. For that matter, I know married couples who have lived apart for considerable time. Being married doesn't create the situation in and of itself. Personally, I don't think tax law should be set up in such a way to treat any couple as a single taxpayer. It should work with each individual paying taxes individually whether a person is married or not. Of course, that causes problems with deductions (who gets to take which deduction for things like dependants and home interest and whatever. So, there's still a lot of potential flaws to be worked out. I don't like the marriage bonus, either, but I don't care for there being a penalty over being apart. Tax law should be as neutral as possible, in my opinion.
