this is my aggravated face

[rushthatspeaks]

Oh hey the being gay-married tax this year was only three hundred dollars. That is actually better than usual, but of course we live in a state where we can file state taxes as married, meaning we're only being forced to pretend we're not married on a federal level. So we're only paying the federal being gay-married tax (by which I mean the amount of money we lose by having to file as individuals), as opposed to both federal and state. And we've lived in a state where our marriage is legal for the vast majority of our married life, so that's been extremely helpful.

That said, I have a very long list of things we could have done with the three hundred dollars. And I have intentionally stopped keeping track of the amount of money we've paid in being gay-married taxes over the course of our marriage, because it is Very, Very Depressing and thinking about it too hard makes me bitter. At the moment, I'm only, you know, slow-burn bitter in a way that crosses my mind at intervals in tax season and occasionally sends me into spasms of aggravation at other moments. If I had an actual figure, it would probably intrude significantly on my quality of life.

Remind me to thank the government sometime for the random-ass bureaucratic reminders that I am a second-class citizen. (We're not talking about the whole right-name-on-passport question right now, or the question of whether the Social Security Administration should or should not be paid attention to by any other branches of the government when it issues an ID, or what it's like having two completely separate legally valid surnames, which has at least become a lot easier since I started using my non-married name as a pen name, meaning it is still okay for people to write checks to it and so on. If I want the federal government to pay any attention to my married name, I must file change-of-name paperwork separate from my marriage license, because as far as my marriage license is concerned they are sticking their fingers in their ears and humming, except SocSec, who will pay attention to a driver's license, but the passport admin kind of wants to listen to SocSec except they don't really and on and on and on and on...)

Anyway. Three hundred dollars. Is what it has cost us this year to be married lesbians. I know people who have had to spend a lot more for the same reason; I know this is relatively light.

Damn it.

Comments

[tirerim]

Well, it could be worse: as a single person, I don't get any of the marriage-related tax benefits at a federal or state level. Also, I'm not, you know, married, which I understand comes with some non-tangible benefits. :-)

[kalmn]

You don't get being-married tax breaks because *you're not married*. Rush doesn't get them *even though she is*. They're not comparable situations.

[tirerim]

I guess it depends on whether you think that being married is something that the government should be giving tax breaks for.

(rushthatspeaks, I am not trying to say that you should not be upset about the inequality here; given that the government gives tax breaks to other married people, you should get them, too. I just think that there's another inequality that often gets forgotten.)

[rushthatspeaks]

Okay, look. There is a long possible conversation, with interesting arguments on both sides, over whether there should be tax breaks for married couples at all. Hell, there is a long possible conversation over whether marriage ought to exist as a legal structure at all-- whether everyone should have civil unions and optional religious weddings.

The place for those conversations is not, in fact, in this post, because on a day where I have had financial harm done to my household and a reminder that our government thinks I am a second-class citizen, your comment does in fact come off as sounding like 'you shouldn't be all that upset about this because nobody should be getting this tax break anyway', and that is really not helpful in this particular moment when I am talking about this thing that hurt me.

I would be cheerful to discuss the philosophy behind the current taxation/marriage-in-general situation at a later point when I am not discussing this other specific inequality which I am trying to bring to people's attention at this point in time because I am very upset.

In short: at the moment this counts as a derail. Please don't.

[tirerim]

Sorry. I was kind of worried about it being a derail, and I was hoping that I had toned it down enough not to be a problem, but I guess I should have listened to the little voice that said not to post instead. Please accept my apologies, and some <hug>s as well?

[tirerim]

(Also, if it would help for me to delete the previous comments and for us to pretend that they never happened, I would be happy to do that. Let me know, or delete them yourself if you would prefer.)

[rushthatspeaks]

I don't like deleting comments, but thank you very much for the offer, and for the apology, which is totally accepted.

*hugsback*

[rushthatspeaks]

Thank you.

[dorothean]

Ugh. This is one of the many, many things I'll be thinking about next month when I will vote that my state's constitution not be amended to make it, redundantly, even more impossible for gay relationships to be formally recognized here.

[jinian]

States are still bothering to do that? Since WA ditched our DOMA (yeah, they're going to appeal or something), I wouldn't think people would feel protected by them any more.

[rushthatspeaks]

I have never known people to vote rationally on fear-based issues. Sadly.

[jinian]

Right, I forgot we have a hideous agenda that must be stopped. (I kind of wish I knew what it was. The only things I have ever known QUEERS to do to the SOIL is composting.)

Anyway, sorry for the badness, which I felt but neglected to say earlier.

[rushthatspeaks]

I think the agenda is something about undermining the very structure of the family and flouting God's Law? I'd get right on that, but I have to make a carrot cake.

(Thanks. Much appreciated.)

[redbird]

Am I undermining or defending the very structure of the family when I bake a flourless chocolate torte before taking my girlfriend to my aunt's house for the seder? I suppose supportive extended families aren't very capitalist.

[tirerim]

Elizabeth Bear posted the Google calendar for the agenda a while back; it's mostly not very exciting. ;-)

[dorothean]

Yes, and I think my state (North Carolina) is actually the only Southeastern state that doesn't already have such an amendment.

[jinian]

I hope it gets voted down. Good luck.

[rushthatspeaks]

Thank you for your vote. I hope that amendment doesn't pass.

[dorothean]

I hope so, too. I've never seen so many political signs agreeing on one subject in my hometown -- there they all say "Another Family Against the Amendment." That's encouraging, but then, my hometown is sometimes called the North Carolina Zoo "because that's where they keep all the liberals..." I think that's less true these days, though. I think there's a good chance it won't pass -- although not having the amendment is a very long way from legalizing marriage here.

[rosefox]

My paycheck just went up by a startling amount because Josh got on insurance through his work (pre-tax) rather than being on my insurance as a domestic partner (post-tax). Our net gain is something like $200 a month. It's all such a mess.

[rushthatspeaks]

It really, really is. And a mess which is inconsistent depending on which bureaucracy you're dealing with, which doesn't help anything.

[redbird]

Damn it indeed. That it's less this year doesn't mean it's not both painful and unjust.

[larryhammer]

Feh, I say. And feh again and again and again.

(edited to fix the icon - THANK you LJ for making it so *easy* to accidentally click the wrong thing on that weird-ass control.)

---L.

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, if you decide to have a biological family, some of the bitter slides right off between the tax credit for the baby + suddenly one of you is a single mother with a dependent!!!!!

....We paid off a lot of the car this year.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

This.

[khava.livejournal.com]

Not to minimize the aggravation and everything, which I totally sympathize with, but as a legal matter, can't you just get a formal legal name change? Like, the kind people do when they change their name without getting married?

And just FYI, I had a months-long hassle when I changed my name, even though I did it through straight-marriage. It's a stupid bureaucratic hassle anyway.

[redbird]

I believe that Rush said that she would have to get a formal name change. "Just get" depends to some extent on jurisdiction, but in most places it's both more stuff to do, and an additional expense.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

It's more to do, it's more money, and it's more to do and more money while remembering every single second that the only reason I have to put up with this particular hassle is that the government is discriminating against me, which is the bit that's really preventing me because ow. By this particular hassle I mean the thing where my marriage license is not accepted as a document proving intent to change my name, despite the fact that it is literally built into the form that it is supposed to do that-- the license has lines saying what your legal name will be after marriage, and if we were a straight couple, I could just go wave that form at the government, and as it is I did wave it at the government of Massachusetts and so I have two legal names. The concept of having to go get an entirely different form and basically say to the feds all right, I will go along with your stupid insistence that this perfectly valid legal document which you would accept under other circumstances doesn't exist because you don't like me-- I will probably wind up doing it at some point but I haven't done it yet because it hurts.

Also I managed to get my right name on my passport so I care less now, because the passport agency eventually consented to accept my Social Security card as ID, which SocSec card was based on an MA state ID, which was based on my marriage license. The MA state ID was very helpful with the feds because it's not like they ask you where you got the last name on it, but it was very convoluted because it meant I was working with less ID with things like SocSec, and also I have this suspicion that getting my passport this way may be at least vaguely illegal and am quite worried I may get a DOMA-letter about it anytime the way my wife did.

And yeah, I know name-changing is always a bureaucratic hassle and I'm totally down with the bits of that hassle that are not literally present just to hurt me. They have succeeded at hurting me, and I just haven't been able to cope.

[khava.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. I have no idea on the issue of the legality of your passport name.

[(Anonymous)]

DOMA letter?
I know perfectly well what both DOMA and a letter are, but WHAAAAAAAAAAAT?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

When my wife applied for a passport under her married name, she was sent in return a letter saying that because the name change had been caused by a same-sex marriage, it was illegal under DOMA for the passport agency to consider it valid, and therefore they would not issue her a passport under said name. I can't remember whether they mentioned that one can change the name legally in other ways (which we knew, but others might not), or whether they left it at the basic denial, as this was several years ago and the associated rage and depression are memory-blurring.