Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on whether same-sex married couples have the right to file joint federal tax returns. But Yale tax law professor Anne Alstott has me wondering whether the entire debate over the tax consequences of the Defense of Marriage Act is missing the point. In an upcoming paper for Yale’s Tax [...]

The annual income tax season is no fun for any of us but it can be a lot worse for same-sex couples in California, Nevada, and Washington. Those three states follow community property law and recognize either same-sex marriages or domestic partnerships. The combination makes tax filing an even bigger hassle than the rest of us [...]

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was not primarily a tax law but it certainly affects the federal taxes that same-sex couples pay. In fact, taxes are the basis for the second of the two cases concerning same-sex marriage that the Supreme Court will hear this week. Although the federal government generally recognizes state [...]

Our new Marriage Bonus and Penalty calculator, despite all its Valentine’s Day finery, ignores the new 0.9 percent Medicare payroll tax hike buried in the 2010 health law. The extra levy affects only a few high-income couples but in very different ways. Lucky couples will collect marriage bonuses of up to $450. But those less [...]

Love is blind, says the adage, and that can be a good thing when it comes to taxes. That’s because married couples often pay a marriage penalty—a higher federal income tax bill than they would if they were single. But for most couples, marriage means a lower tax bill—a marriage bonus in tax-speak. Just in [...]