Eight Democrat U.S. Senators have called on the Internal Revenue Service to promulgate tax regulations to accommodate homosexuals as couples "married filing jointly."
-- From "Senators call on IRS to clear up rules for same-sex couples" by Allison Linn, senior writer msnbc.com 6/23/11
In the letter, the senators noted that some state tax laws recognize same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships, even though the federal government does not. That’s creating confusion for couples who want to file accurate returns but are classified differently by state and federal tax regulators, they said. They asked the IRS to offer guidance.
This isn’t the first time the tax issue has come up. The National Taxpayer Advocate, an independent organization within the IRS that seeks to help taxpayers, also noted in a 2010 report to Congress that the confusion between state laws that recognize same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships, and federal rules that do not, were creating complications for taxpayers.
The senators say some of the confusion would be cleared up if the Defense of Marriage Act were repealed. That’s a federal law that specifies that marriage is between a man and a woman only.
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From "Senators to IRS: Fix the Gay Tax Mess" by Scott James, The Bay Citizen 6/23/11
A change last year, originally meant to help same-sex couples in some states take advantage of tax rates offered to heterosexual couples, instead required gay couples to follow complex new rules to file their returns.
The rules were so confusing, most had to hire professional accountants, paying as much as $4,000 for expertise to file their returns. An estimated 60,000 gay couples in California are impacted.
The senators’ intervention comes less than two weeks after another problem related to the situation was exposed: Hundreds of gay couples who followed the new rules had their returns rejected anyway by someone named “J. Bell” in the Fresno IRS office because the couples were not straight.
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