The two certainties in life are death and taxes. Death entered my life very unexpectedly last month. This month it was time to face taxes.
Tax time is particularly frustrating for LGBT families in states without legal recognition. Not only are there all the regular headaches that come with tax forms, there is no option to file jointly or have a dependent spouse. Decisions about who pays how much rent and who earns interest off of joint bank accounts aren't even questions in the real world - we pay and earn them together. In the tax world, though, we divide them up dutifully, attempting to be accurate. (If you would like to experience the difficulty of dividing such things, make yourself a bowl of soft-set pudding. Then try to divide it into two equal parts by drawing a line down the middle with a spoon and scooping as fast as you can.)
The Respect for Marriage Act would make federal filing easier at least for LGBT families living in states with legal recognition (although it wouldn't change anything for us).
And because Rebecca doesn't really earn money, our taxes were much simpler than they will be in the future. We're at a time in our lives where the lack of legal recognition isn't a huge problem. As we grow older, start earning real money, buy a house, and have children, we're going to encounter more difficulties.
We're committing in the mitten, but sometimes that's a hard commitment to make.
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