The other day a reader expressed surprise that hospitals can deny domestic partners admission even where civil unions are legal.
It's just an example of how, when you try to fob off some pinchbeck version of marriage, it never works.
Here's another, involving health insurance:
It's just an example of how, when you try to fob off some pinchbeck version of marriage, it never works.
Here's another, involving health insurance:
On average, a typical employee with a domestic partner will pay about $1,069 more a year in taxes than a married employee with the same coverage, according to a 2007 report by Lee Badgett, research director of the Williams Institute, which studies sexual orientation policy issues. (That figure, which is bound to be higher now given escalating health care costs, includes taxes on the benefit itself as well as the money employees would save if they could pay for their benefits using pretax dollars like heterosexual employees can.
Forgive me for being dense but I don't understand this.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that the person with a domestic partner is taxed at the same rate as any other single (non-married) person?
Or is it saying that only heterosexual people, regardless of marital status, can use pretax dollars to pay for their benefits?
Or does this mean that where same sex marriage or domestic partnerships are recognized, the people registered as such pay more for their insurance premiums?
???
What happens is that if you are accessing benefits your partner gets via his/her job, s/he gets taxed at the highest rate because the law assumes it's a benefit the partner is getting singly. Via my former partner I had access to all kinds of benefits by way of his employment, but they would have all been fully taxed at his highest marginal rate because the law considered him legally single and having chosen to gift those benefits to a stranger.
ReplyDeleteWell, that goes quite a long way in clearing up my confusion. However, it has cast me into stunned amazement. I have never been able to "gift" my health insurance benefits to anyone. Had I been able to do so, it would have made a huge difference when a younger sibling was living with me and fully supported by me. I would have been very happy to pay a little more in both premiums and taxes in order to have insurance coverage for the child.
ReplyDeleteIt is just my opinion that single payer is the only sensible solution to the health insurance mess in this country. Opening Medicare to enrollment would have been a simple solution to the problem, again this is just my opinion.