Labels and Gay Benefits in Health BillBy ROBERT PEAR
Published: November 7, 2009 Supporters of gay rights have long been trying to change the tax treatment of health benefits provided by employers to the domestic partners of their employees. In effect, such benefits are now treated as taxable income for the employee, and the employer may owe payroll taxes on their fair-market value.
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Under the bill, such benefits would be tax-free, just like health benefits provided to the family of an employee married to a person of the opposite sex.
Representative Jim McDermott, Democrat of Washington, who proposed the change, said it would “correct a longstanding injustice, end a blatant inequity in the tax code and help make health care coverage more affordable for more Americans.”
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“I meet people all the time who are gratified they work for companies that offer domestic partner benefits,” he (Joseph R. Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign) said. “But they pass on the benefits because they cannot afford the taxes that go with the benefits.”
M. V. Lee Badgett, a labor economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said employees with domestic partner benefits paid $1,100 a year more in taxes, on average, than married employees with the same coverage.
<some other little known provisions in the huge bill are noted in the NYT article>
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health/policy/08benefits.html?_r=1&hp