Via the “Gay Agenda News Team”—-surely a bastion of objective reporting on human sexuality issues—-comes the declaration that today, Tax Day, should be hailed as “a reminder of the inequalities remaining in the way the United States handles same-sex relationships.”

The inequality at issue here is a financial one. According to Gay Executive, “Gay couples in state-sanctioned domestic partnerships, civil unions or same-sex marriages often pay higher taxes because they do not get the federal tax benefits that go with marriage.” Gay Executive estimates the added annual tax burden on gay couples to be “more than a billion dollars.”

Gay Executive doesn’t make clear how it arrives at that number—-a billion’s a lot!—-but it does point to some specific limitations for same-sex partnerships imposed by the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):

Inability to file taxes jointly results in major differences in tax liability. Consider a gay couple where one partner has a taxable income of $40,000 and the other a taxable income of $20,000. If the couple could file their federal taxes jointly, the tax bill would be $8,217.50 but filing separately they must pay $9,032.50, an additional expense of 815 dollars.

In addition to the potential expense of filing separately, gay couples must pay income taxes on benefits paid to spouses such as health benefits.  That additional taxable income can increase the tax rate that the individual must pay and can add up to thousands of dollars in extra taxes not paid by their heterosexual counterparts.

It’s a shame that gay couples don’t have the ability to cash in on these tax breaks like married couples can. Hell, it’s a shame that as a single person, I can’t cash in on this shit either. Us single folks lose precious tax dollars every year—-maybe even a billion!—-because of the government’s unfair favoritism of the married. I swear I’m just as productive, employed, and likely to buy a home in the future as any married sucker, gay or straight. I may be even more likely to be married in the future than they are—-half of those people get divorced, anyway.

How about a compromise: the government stops voicing its support of one relationship status over all others, and doesn’t fund anybody based on who they love or how they choose to declare it.

Photo by Mendhak