When I was growing up in the 70s, there was a Sunday morning children’s program called “Wonderama.” Its closing theme song was “Kids are People, Too.” I’m proud to work for a firm that views and treats members of the LGBTQ community the same way…as people, like everyone else.
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After the historic June 26, 2013, Supreme Court ruling that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (aka DOMA) was unconstitutional, many LGBT couples happily committed to legal marriage in 2013 and even more are considering nuptials in the near future. However, many couples, for a variety of reasons, have not yet taken the plunge. Our LGBT tax consulting experts have identified several economic and tax considerations LGBT couples may want to quantify when assessing the financial impact of marriage. This is the first in a series of blogs that will address these issues.
Time is quickly running out for married same-sex taxpayers to file their individual returns as single for 2012! When the IRS announced on August 29th of this year that it will look to the “place of celebration” to determine a couple’s marital status, same-sex married couples living in non-marriage equality states were finally given the right to be treated the same as opposite-sex couples under federal tax laws. The announcement mandates all legally married same-sex couples to either file as married filing jointly or married filing separately for the 2013 tax year. However, based on the effective date of the guidance, couples who have not filed their tax returns for 2012 have the
The Supreme Court's consideration of Windsor v. U.S., an estate tax case challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), is one of the most anticipated cases in recent history. The Windsor case concerns a surviving same-sex spouse seeking an estate tax refund based on IRS's DOMA-based disallowance of the marital deduction for her spouse's estate. Although DOMA is not primarily viewed as a tax law, it carries significant tax consequences for same-sex couples by requiring they be treated as unmarried for Federal law purposes. The Court's decision could have a far-reaching impact on the administration of the tax code.
The IRS has issued guidance, in question-and-answer format, to clarify certain filing questions and ambiguities faced by same-sex couples in state-recognized marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships. Despite the facts that the Obama Administration has decided not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and that a number of courts have struck down the key provision in DOMA that denies recognition of same-sex marriages for purposes of administering federal law, the IRS continues to maintain that legally married same-sex couples don't qualify for tax benefits otherwise available to heterosexual married taxpayers.
