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Well, that’s just their own fault for choosing to be gay, right?

Ugh, this whole situation is making me sick. My beautiful 3-year-old niece is directly affected by these discriminatory policies, because my sister is a lesbian in a long-term domestic partnership with a woman who is the primary breadwinner for their little family unit. They’ve been together for eight years, and are just wonderful parents.

Thank goodness they can finally get married legally under California state law… they’re doing so in less than two weeks. I only pray that there aren’t enough voting horrible bigots in this state to take away their right to equal treatment this November.

And now McCain wants to make things just as bad for the rest of us? I guess that woudl be one kind of equality.

I can’t even go to family gatherings anymore because I get in fights about universal health care with health-care-worker family members who have drunk the AMA drug cocktail about how bad it is.

Uh, I’m as confused as denelian. They’re BENEFITS. How can it be legal for the government to tax BENEFITS? This is some disturbing shit.

Its all in how you legally define income. If you go on a game show and at the end of the day you win a car worth $30,000, a vacation worth $5,000, $2,000 worth of other prize, and $1,000 cash the IRS sees you as having just earned $38,000 worth of taxable income because it defines all those things as income. McCain is talking about changing the law so that forms of employee compensation other than cash are considered income.

McCain is fine with our current health system. But Health Care is a “hot button issue”, so he has to say SOMETHING!

So what do they (the McCain strategy team) come up with? The craziest health plan ever, based on supply-side economics and voodoo.

It’s complete shit, and would never get through Congress in a million years (taxing benefits? Even less viable than universal coverage, if you ask me). But now, John McCain can say “I have a Health Plan that will bring Health Care Choice to EVERY AMERICAN (applause)”.

And if he gets elected, he can “call upon Congress to pass this bill which will bring Health Care Choice to EVERY AMERICAN (applause)”. And when they inevitably don’t pass it, he can get back up there and say, “I called upon Congress to give Health Care Choice to EVERY AMERICAN (applause)…and America, THEY failed you! (Boo)”.

Pretty ingenious in a Richard Kuklinski kind of way.

—HRC INFO—
Taxation of Domestic Partner Benefits

When an employer provides health insurance for the spouse or dependents of an employee, federal tax law allows the value of the health insurance coverage to be excluded from the employee’s gross income.

But when an employer provides the same health insurance coverage for the domestic partner or the dependents of the domestic partner of an employee, federal tax law considers the fair market value of that coverage, including the employee’s pre-tax contributions, as “imputed income” to the employee. According to a December 2007 report by the Center for American Progress and the Williams Institute, employees with partner health benefits now pay on average $1,069 per year more in taxes than would a married employee with the same coverage. The only exception is when a domestic partner qualifies as a dependent of the employee under IRS definitions.

Additionally, employees cannot use pre-tax dollars to pay for a domestic partner’s coverage, precluding them from the full benefits of a Flexible Spending Account, Health Reimbursement Account or Health Savings Account.

Because the imputed income increases the employee’s overall taxable income, it also increases the employer’s payroll taxes – the Social Security and unemployment insurance tax that employers pay based on employees’ taxable incomes. According to the same CAP/Williams Institute report, employers pay a total of $57 million per year in additional payroll taxes because of this unequal tax treatment.

As a result, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals that secure employer-provided health insurance coverage for themselves and their unmarried partners face a significant tax penalty; one that, depending on the individual, can be in the thousands of dollars per year and result in the individual paying upwards of 50% more in federal taxes. Meanwhile, employers that extend partner health benefits pay higher payroll taxes and face the administrative burden of maintaining separate payroll functions for income tax withholding and payroll taxes.

If, as you indicated, you have a very low income, you are likely in a correspondingly low tax bracket. This means you won’t be paying much in the way of taxes on your benefits. Per the linked article, you’ll also receive a $2500 tax credit. If you are in a low tax bracket (say 15%) , there’s no way you’ll be paying more that $2500 in taxes on you benefits in a given year. Your benefits would be costing you almost $1400/month (for you alone) before you’d be paying more in taxes than you are now.