Last week I cleared out my checking and savings accounts, plus my sock drawer stash. Then I handed over that thick stack of twenties, fifties, and hundreds in exchange for money orders to pay my tax bill.
Ben Franklin’s adage about the certainty of death and taxes may be sardonic, but here in the United States during tax season, the reminder seems apt. Today’s news contained stories about the tax rate, about loopholes, about promoting certain social behaviors through tax breaks, about corporate taxes, about who pays how much — or how little (link).
A few weeks ago I read about the Refuse to Lie project (link), where legally married same-sex couples in the United States pledge their refusal to mark “single” on their federal tax returns, potentially facing stiff consequences for filing jointly. Under IRS rules, same-sex couples who live in states that recognize their marriages are nevertheless instructed to file their federal taxes separately since US federal law only acknowledges man/woman marriages.
When Taryn and I sat down to work on our tax returns, I told her about the Refuse to Lie project and we discussed our filing choices. We opted against filing our federal taxes jointly, in part because we have not been legally married and committing perjury isn’t my favorite way to spend a spring day.
However, we did have the option of filing our state taxes jointly, since Oregon has recognized our relationship since 2009 when we filed our Declaration of Domestic Partnership. I call it my Second-Class-Citizen Marriage. To file our state taxes jointly, we each filed separate federal returns, plus prepared an “as if” joint federal form to acquire the necessary figures to finalize our state return.
When I compared the bottom lines of our single tax returns and our fanciful joint return, I felt nauseated. A few thousand dollars is a lot of money to me. Instead of getting a healthy refund if the feds recognized (and apparently valued) my relationship, I was digging around in my dresser, scrounging for every last dollar I had socked away, wiping out my scant savings in order to pay Uncle Sam.