US Senators attempt to fix tax filings for gay couples
Plus, guess who's back on the market!
US Senators have introduced a Tax Fairness bill that would allow LGBT couples married in any jurisdiction before 2013 to amend their tax returns. The bill could see couples re-coop $55 million in taxes (which sounds like a pretty low estimate to me, given that this could affect up to 9 years of tax filings and may include lots of upper-income couples who would obviously reap the most benefit). It already has 48 Senate sponsors, including one Republican (Susan Collins of Maine), and all Democrats/Independents except Joe Manchin (WV), Maggie Hassan (NH) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ)
Prior to 2013, federal law prohibited same-sex married couples from filing joint taxes, forcing some to pay more tax as singles. That year, the Supreme Court ordered the government to recognize legal marriages recognized by states, but the IRS only allowed people to backdate filings to 2010. Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2003, but some Americans could have gotten married abroad as early as 2001 (in the Netherlands).
There was an attempt to include this in the Build Back Better Act, but when that entire bill was killed by opposition from Joe Manchin, the replacement Inflation Reduction Act didn’t include it. Even though this shouldn’t be that controversial, I can’t see Republicans passing this as a standalone matter in either chamber. Republicans control the House and Democrats need eight more senators to join in passing the bill out of that chamber. Including Collins, there are just nine Republicans still in the Senate who voted for the Respect for Marriage Act last year, so Democrats would need all of them on board to pass it, but the House would be unlikely to take it up under speaker McCarthy.
In Mexico, local activists in Durango state are calling for a hate crime law and a ban on conversion therapy in the state, and are conducting a survey of the LGBT community to help bolster their case.
And in Nayarit state, the head of the State Council for Inclusion says that bills to penalize discrimination and ban “conversion therapy” will be debated again during the next session of state congress in the fall, after they were postponed under pressure from anti-LGBT groups.
A local council in Northern Ireland has called on the province to ban “conversion therapy.” However, there isn’t currently a functioning legislature or executive, as the UK-unionist parties refuse to participate over lingering Brexit disagreements. It’s possible that Westminster could choose to legislate for Northern Ireland when the UK government finally drops its long-awaited “conversion therapy” bill.
This isn’t going to be a pop culture/shirtless guys newsletter, but since it’s a slow news day, I may as well share that Ricky Martin and his husband Jwan Yosef are divorcing.
—
Thank you all for being among the first subscribers to my Substack – and especially to the paid subscribers whose contributions help me keep this going!
What this newsletter will be is still evolving, so if there are things you’d like to see more of or less of in here, or if there are topics you’d like me to cover in more depth, please let me know by leaving a comment, shooting an e-mail, or sliding into my DMs on Twitter or Instagram.