IRS Recognizes All Married Gay Couples Across the Country

So much momentous, life-changing good news in one day, I can hardly take it all in, boys. After waiting all these many years for Change, now that it's arrived, it just seems unreal - am I waking or dreaming?

First, via Freedom to Marry:

Today, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service announced how they will implement the June 2013 Supreme Court ruling declaring the central part of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The Treasury Department and the IRS announced that all legally married same-sex couples will be fully respected by all federal tax programs, including income tax, gift and estate taxes, deductions, exemptions, retirement accounts, and child tax credit.

The ruling will be applied to same-sex couples who married legally in any U.S. state or international country that has approved marriage for same-sex couples. All couples - no matter which state they live in (even if they live in a state that discriminates against their marriage) - will be respected for these federal tax programs.

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced the decision today. He said:

Today’s ruling provides certainty and clear, coherent tax filing guidance for all legally married same-sex couples nationwide. It provides access to benefits, responsibilities and protections under federal tax law that all Americans deserve. This ruling also assures legally married same-sex couples that they can move freely throughout the country knowing that their federal filing status will not change.

Wonderful news and a great advance for equality and civil rights - but note that the ruling does not apply to couples in domestic partnerships or civil unions. Of course, every couple should seek professional advice on how best to make use of these new financial benefits.

What does this mean for you? Well for starters, bud, even if you aren't particularly well off, it means that if your husband dies and you inherit the house, you do not have to pay income tax on the value of it, or any part of his estate you inherit, if you guys were married. And that, fellas, is truly a big fucking deal.

For another thing here and now, if you have health insurance through your husband's employer's plan, it will no longer be counted as income to you, so you won't have to pay income tax on it any longer.

Evan Wolfson has compiled a comprehensive list of statements and policies from various federal agencies in the wake of the Windsor ruling here. At the time of this writing, it seems that Social Security for the near future will base benefits on whether a couple lives in a marriage-equality state or not, but that might change, so stay tuned.

See also these very helpful factsheets on Life after DOMA, and what it means for you in terms of bankruptcy, family and medical leave, federal student aid, and other pertinent issues.


Update, 4:45 p.m.:  More good news, via the Advocate:

The federal Department of Health and Human Services announced today that legally married same-sex couples on Medicare will be eligible for equal benefits and joint placement in nursing homes around the country.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in June striking down a key section of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today's announcement is just the first in a series of changes forthcoming in how the department deals with married same-sex couples.

"Today, Medicare is ensuring that all beneficiaries will have equal access to coverage in a nursing home where their spouse lives, regardless of their sexual orientation," said Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Marilyn Tavenner in a statement. "Prior to this, a beneficiary in a same-sex marriage enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan did not have equal access to such coverage and, as a result, could have faced time away from his or her spouse or higher costs because of the way that marriage was defined for this purpose." . . .

The new guidelines revise this standard, confirming that Medicare now applies equally to all married couples, regardless of where the couple resides. That's important for legally married gay and lesbian Medicare recipients who reside in a nursing home in a state that does not embrace marriage equality, since they will still be eligible for the same benefits as opposite-sex couples.

Update, Friday, 12:30 p.m.: Yesterday, a federal district judge in California struck down the provisions of Title 38 of the United States Code that limited veterans benefits to heterosexual couples. According to Freedom to Marry,

The judge wrote that there was no rational basis for the Department of Veterans Affairs to bar same-sex spouses from receiving these protections - that it is not related to the goal of gender equality, to any military purposes, or to the military's commitment to caring for veteran families. The judge explained that the definition of "spouse" in Title 38 of the Code of Federal Regulations is unconstitutional.

For now, the ruling is limited to married same-sex couples living in states with the freedom to marry. We await further clarification on how military families living in the 37 non-marriage states will be treated.

The case is Cooper-Harris v. United States, and here's a sweet video about the plaintiffs:

Middle Class Is Un-American

The New Yorker reports on the arrogant, thieving, high-Tory mindset of today's Republican Party, and their Orwellian attempts at corrupting the meaning of plain English - emphasis mine:

On the floor of the Senate this week, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican Minority Whip, criticized President Barack Obama for talking about the middle class. The mere phrase “middle class” — that most anodyne of demographic terms, the category to which half of all Americans polled identify, and into which Mitt Romney is always trying to shoehorn very, very wealthy people like himself — emerged, in Kyl’s evocation, as some kind of crazy-lefty bumper-sticker slogan. By alluding to “what he calls ‘the middle class,’ ” Kyl said, as though Obama had come up with the phrase, the President was “pitting these Americans” against the wealthy, “spreading economic resentment, and weaken[ing] American values and ideals.” Kyl went on: “We don’t need the current American President touring the country and defining every American’s values and status based on a class system that he’s made up. I don’t think there’s anything called middle-class values. I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It’s not what we do in America.”

Increasingly, it isn’t. Not if we’re in office or running for office, and especially not if we’re Republicans. America perpetuates a class system — and an income-inequality gap growing faster than that of most other countries — but American politicians try not to speak of it, because if they do, they get slimed. “What you could do for me,” President Obama told a group of Presidential historians in May, 2011, “is to help me find a way to discuss the issue of inequality without being accused of class warfare.” A year later, it takes even less to attract that particular charge, even as it takes more rhetorical chutzpah to get around the reality.

It’s remarkable how far to the right the acceptable political discourse about the haves and have-nots has shifted — or perhaps it’s just moved into the realm of denial. In the not-so-distant political past, it was considered reasonable for Republicans to allude to inequality and even vow to try to remedy it. In an excellent recent article in Rolling Stone about the contemporary Republican party’s extreme attachment to tax cuts for the rich, Tim Dickinson quotes a 1985 speech by Ronald Reagan, a speech that somebody — maybe Kyl — would surely be calling “class warfare” talk until he heard who’d made it. “We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” Reagan vowed, adding that they “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10% of his salary—and that’s crazy." . . .

This Could Happen to You

Annie Liebovitz in front of one of her most famous photographs

Another reason marriage matters: let's say you finally do find your soulmate and settle down in that cozy little house/condo/cottage/doublewide/whatever, to live happily ever after, with the dogs and the picket fence and the plaster cupids, etc. And then one day when you get to the end of ever-after, he dies.

If the house is in his name, you better start packing your bags pronto, buster. You don't own it; his snarky relatives do. Oh they may be nice as pie right now while he's alive, they may fawn over you and proclaim loudly every chance they get how much they love you; but watch out for the knives as soon as he's gone. Trust me, I know.

Even if the house is in both your names, you're still on very shaky ground: it's not the relatives you have to worry about in that case, it's the IRS. You will have to pay up to FIFTY PERCENT of his share of the value in taxes. Yup. Even though your name is on it too.

Why? Because you aren't his widower; you guys were never legally married in the eyes of the law. You have no more rights than a stranger. Even if he left his share to you in a will, you still have to pay.

Stop and do the math: if it happened today, where would you get the cash to give the taxman? Or would you have to sell your home and slink away like a homeless person? Suppose it didn't sell for what you paid, or for what your equity is, or suppose you couldn't sell it for any price, as in today's market: what would you do?

The IRS is going to get what you owe them, of course; they can garnish your wages if need be. Or other financially devastating things.

That's why marriage matters. As it seems legendary photographer Annie Liebovitz has discovered. Granted, she's in a much higher financial bracket than most of us will ever be. But the principle is the same.

If you aren't married, then when one of you dies, the other one is crap in the eyes of the law. You have no rights to anything that was your partner's. Believe it.

From AfterEllen:

Out Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz recently took out a loan against her prized photographs in order to pay off her outstanding mortgage debt. Miss Leibovitz is not alone in suffering from the global economic crisis, but what struck me about her story was that most of her financial woes stemmed from her inheritance of her long time partner, Susan Sontag’s, estate.

As Suze Orman pointed out in her Valentine’s Day wish for gay marriage, same-sex couples do not have the same privileges as straight married couples when it comes to inheritance. If your partner passes away and leaves her estate to you, you have to pay up to 50 percent of the value of your inheritance in taxes. However, if you and your partner were recognized as a married couple, you wouldn’t have to pay a dime. And it is precisely this unjust double standard that got Annie Leibovitz into financial trouble.

When Sontag died in 2004, she bequeathed several properties to Leibovitz, who was forced to pony up half of their value to keep them. Yes, she makes a nice chunk of change from Vanity Fair, and yes, she probably could have just sold the properties when the market was good in 2004, but that’s not really the point. The point is she should never have been in the position of paying or selling to not pay as much in the first place. Her wealth and poor decision-making are incidental.

Melissa Etheridge: You Can Forget My Taxes

Okay, so she's really speaking hypothetically; it just wouldn't work, you know. After a whole big bunch of nasty letters, one day the IRS goons would simply bust down your front door, haul all your shit away, and throw your ass in a concrete cell for years and years.

But it is a lovely thought . . . .

Okay. So Prop 8 passed. Alright, I get it. 51% of you think that I am a second class citizen. Alright then. So my wife, uh I mean, roommate? Girlfriend? Special lady friend? You are gonna have to help me here because I am not sure what to call her now. Anyways, she and I are not allowed the same right under the state constitution as any other citizen. Okay, so I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes because I am not a full citizen. I mean that would just be wrong, to make someone pay taxes and not give them the same rights, sounds sort of like that taxation without representation thing from the history books. . . .

I know when I grew up gay was a bad word. Homo, lezzie, faggot, dyke. Ignorance and fear ruled the day. There were so many "thems" back then. The blacks, the poor ... you know, "them". Then there was the immigrants. "Them.” Now the them is me.

I tell myself to take a breath, okay take another one, one of the thems made it to the top. Obama has been elected president. This crazy fearful insanity will end soon. This great state and this great country of ours will finally come to the understanding that there is no "them". We are one. We are united. What you do to someone else you do to yourself. That "judge not, lest ye yourself be judged" are truthful words and not Christian rhetoric.

Today the gay citizenry of this state will pick themselves up and dust themselves off and do what we have been doing for years. We will get back into it. We love this state, we love this country and we are not going to leave it. Even though we could be married in Mass. or Conn, Canada, Holland, Spain and a handful of other countries, this is our home. This is where we work and play and raise our families. We will not rest until we have the full rights of any other citizen. It is that simple, no fearful vote will ever stop us, that is not the American way.

Come to think of it, I should get a federal tax break too...