Make Them Pay
Hey there Christian conservatives! Are you sad because courts are scrapping second-class citizenship for gays and lesbians? Do you just want to put them all back in the closet? Or at least marginalize them? Maybe not have to put up with with that snooty gay couple who just moved into your neighborhood — and the horrible embarrassment of having to explain them to your kids?
And do you want to reduce the federal deficit while you’re at it? I thought you might — and have I got a deal for you!
In the truly Maoist spirit of heightening the contradictions, I present you the following strategy. Take it. It’s all yours.
Let’s start with one of the lesser-known (but still very important) federal rights that come with marriage — immunity from federal gift taxes. As tax lawyer Robert W. Wood explains it,
If you’re married, there’s no limit on the amount of money or property you can transfer back and forth between spouses. There’s no gift tax and no limit (except in those instances where the spouse getting the assets isn’t a U.S. citizen). If you’re not married, you are limited to $13,000 per year tax free. Any gifts beyond that trigger an immediate gift tax or eat into your lifetime gift-tax exemption of $1 million. If you use the gift tax exemption it reduces, dollar for dollar, the amount you can pass on estate tax free to heirs at your death, and most people prefer saving the exemption for their estates. (While the estate tax has lapsed for 2010, under current law the estate tax exemption will be just $1 million come Jan. 1, 2011.)
Gift tax immunity is one of the many marriage-related rights that can’t be had through any other means. Civil unions, domestic partnerships, contracts, and even state-level same-sex marriages all fail to grant immunity owing to the Defense of Marriage Act, which spells out that even state-level same-sex marriages are never valid for federal purposes like this one.
From here, the method is simple: Identify wealthy gay couples, particularly those with disparate incomes, and report them to the IRS. It’s easy to do, and if the couples are not very careful about documenting joint ownership of their major assets, there will be trouble. Even a middle-class gay couple in which one partner bought the other a car might qualify, if they didn’t report the gift as such and declare the exemption.
I can’t get precise stats on tax cheating, obviously, but I bet there are plenty of violators out there — people who are, in effect, pretending to be federally married, and who are costing you money. Make them pay. Make sure marriage means something. Stand up for your rights!
If this strategy gets traction, the knock-on effects will be tremendous. Gay couples will avoid commitment. They’ll return to the closet, or at least they’ll stop trying to affirm their relationships in public. Wealthy, high-profile, role-model gays — the sort who most often lead people astray — will have to go back into hiding for fear of the IRS.
Gay relationships will suffer, which is precisely what I take it that religious conservatives want. The gift tax immunity for married couples recognizes the financial reality of marriage, which is that both partners usually share pretty much everything, and sorting it all out would go a long way toward dividing the couple against themselves. Which happens to be just what we want for homosexuals. (Right?)
Beyond that, I’m genuinely curious: Would it work? Should it be tried? Why isn’t it being tried already? Do you find it appealing? Would it, in your opinion, help to save marriage?
(Note to the clueless: What I really think is that this is a horrible strategy, one almost certain to backfire. But most people don’t know about the federal gift tax immunity, even as it protects and enables their heterosexual marriages — that is, even as it shelters their families from the state. “Write up a contract,” these people say, cluelessly. “It’s just as good as a marriage.” If only!
Most religious conservatives I think will be loath to enlist the IRS in their cause. I suspect they won’t want to sign on to the above. Good for them, I suppose. But if civilization really is at stake, why not?)
Maybe I am missing something;
Who is proposing this strategy, except you?Report
@cfpete,
No one is. I brought it up to illustrate one of the things that marriage does and that no other arrangement can duplicate. I also brought it up to show that apparently no one really cares about it, and that offering it to gays and lesbians would be no big deal.
Perhaps I could have been clearer. I’ve been a bit snarky of late.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, I can’t think of any solid reason not to try to expand the gift tax exemption to homosexual couples, but I don’t know if I count as a Christian conservative or not.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
No problem.
True story: My sister, a judge*, just got married this past weekend. Let me first say that I love her because she is my sister, but to be frank, she is a complete bitch. She argues for sport. She is never wrong and I don’t know how anyone could live with her. That might explain why she is in her mid-fifties and never married. She has been with the groom for about six years and I can best describe him as a “kept man” – no scratch that – “punching bag.” He has no job and no ambition but there is also no sex and certainly no love. His job is to take her rhetorical beatings and in exchange he never has to worry about money.
To the point, tax considerations were the only reason for marriage. She figures it will save her about $140,000 per annum in taxes through various maneuvers.
So yes, same-sex couples should have the same capability for tax arbitrage, but hopefully, more normal relationships.
*Don’t worry, she is a very fair and respected jurist. She just completely sacrificed the personal for the professional. In the rat race to partner, managing partner, and then judge; intimacy was left behind. I do think; the demands would have been much less on a man in her position.Report
If I was being hounded and persecuted by idiots for my lifestyle choices, I would be a “bit snarky”, too. This is an excellent post. I had not considered this aspect of “marriage” tho I have been married for 30 years. I think you are correct, nobody really cares about the tax incentives, except the hate mongers who created DOMA. They, undoubtedly, knew the ramifications. I’m waiting for US to grow up and become Americans. The years are dwindling.Report
“I brought it up to illustrate one of the things that marriage does and that no other arrangement can duplicate. ”
Well, the COULD duplicate it, right? If there were a civil unions law, there is no reason it couldn’t include the same gift tax inclusion, right? Perhaps such laws do not include such an exclusion now, but they could. Right?
That is, I am not sure how this issue is that different from things like hospital visitation and all the rest. There COULD be responses short of full marriage equality that address each issue.
I am pretty sure many opponents of equality have no interest in these kinds of concessions for civil unions. But a person can make a logical argument for such concessions and against full equality.Report
@Sam M,
The obvious way to do it would be to abolish the gift tax entirely, Sam. (See, I do work for the Cato Institute…)Report
Not to mention government has no business controlling what an individual gives to another under any circumstances. And since we shouldn’t care either, we should tell our government to end this stupid law. It’s just one more example of how we are controlled and our property rights are violated.Report
@M. Farmer,
Agreed in principle about getting rid of the gift tax, but it’s pretty easy to envision all kinds of shenanigans. For instance, why would I ever pay an employee? I could offer him a “gift” every two weeks equal to his salary. Presto, no taxes! I libertarian utopia I can support! Although… someone has to pay the soldiers and court stenographers. (I am not pure enough to support a privatized military and legal system.)Report
Most religious conservatives I think will be loath to enlist the IRS in their cause.
Perhaps we could find a middle ground. We could have a special class of people whose job it would be to inform on their neighbors and coworkers and friends and whatnot to the government. (They’d be paid for their troubles, of course.)
They could be, like, a secret department that provides some degree of state security.
This would actually work for much more than suspected homosexual couples, but folks could talk to the government about neighbors suspected of all sorts of illegal things. Plus these informants wouldn’t have to follow the rigorous (and, quite frankly, nigh-insurmountable) levels of protections that Official Police have to follow.
Hey, if they see a friend light up a doob at a concert, a quick text to the authorities could make society better for all of us.Report
@Jaybird,
For after all, as the Bible says, We are our brother’s informant.Report
@M. Farmer, we have a responsibility to our fellow citizens.
I mean, jeez, we all pay for each other’s health care, social security, sidewalks, firemen, policemen, and roads… shouldn’t we be responsible citizens and ensure that we are all following the laws that we agreed ought to be passed?Report
@Jaybird, Papers pleazzz!Report
@Robert Cheeks, and if they can’t produce papers?
They obviously belong on the other side of a border somewhere.Report
@Jaybird, Religious conservatives unwilling to use an organ of the government to further their cause? Isn’t that exactly what this is all about?
As it happens tax exemption for religious entities has repeatedly been the battlegorund in lots of political spats. There’s a rather liberal church in Southern California that the IRS has been on for years now. It’s not that rare. And in fact the IRS has pulled status on some right-wing religious organizations for their political advocacy.Report
@Jim, The Johnson Amendment is one of those amendments that just gets me all riled up.
Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech…
Without getting into the issues raised by Walz v. Tax Commission of the City of New York, it seems to me that the very idea that tax exemption revocation be used as a threat against churches for things that they say from the pulpit is an *OBVIOUS* violation of the principles behind those found in the First Amendment.Report
As a gay marriage skeptic–a person who believes it’s only meaningful to speak of marriage as something between a man and a woman–I have no interest in Jason’s proposal. And neither will the vast majority of Americans.
But if those who doubt the wisdom of gay marriage are really bigots, shouldn’t Jason’s proposal be irresistible? The reason it isn’t, I think, is that most Americans don’t oppose gay marriage out of animus. They oppose it because they intuit that marriage is, by its very nature, oriented toward reproduction and child-rearing. They see that this natural connection has become increasingly tenuous in today’s culture. They see the widespread impacts of out-of-wedlock births and unstable partnering that are especially severe in minority communities. And they wonder about the wisdom of a movement that denies the connection between marriage and child-bearing altogether.
“Love makes a marriage,” is a fine-sounding slogan for a political movement, but it is not a sufficient basis for a minimally healthy marriage culture.Report
@Matthew Schmitz, Doctor, the leg was green when the patient was wheeled in.Report
@Matthew Schmitz,
Ah yes, they
Marriage is by its very nature, oriented toward the concentration of wealth via tying certain property rights to reproduction and child-rearing. It’s a subtle difference but an important one.Report
@JosephFM,
I can’t see it being oriented toward the concentration of wealth, though it obviously would be in certain cases. But otherwise, yes, money definitely comes into it.Report
@Matthew Schmitz,
If this tax immunity is not something that must be reserved for heterosexuals alone — if it’s okay to give it to homosexuals — then on what grounds is it different from the rest of civil marriage?
Or, if it’s not okay to give the tax immunity to homosexuals, on what grounds do you justify their breaking the law?Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
Many activists would be unsatisfied with just having all the rights of civil marriage bundled in something called a “civil union.” I don’t think that’s totally unreasonable. The name matters, too.
On the specific question raised in your post, I wouldn’t be opposed to homosexual couples receiving such tax immunity under conditions like those proposed by my friends Ryan Anderson and Sherif Girgis (in a piece that Ross Douthat recently cited in a response to Andrew Sullivan):
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2009/02/84.Report
@Matthew Schmitz,
You mean this?
So you want civil unions? Plus a footnote to the Free Exercise Clause saying, “We, like, mean it and stuff”?
I frankly find it insulting to take such a bargain.
Not because of the civil unions terminology — call it whatever you want, for the sake of argument — I find insulting the implication that what I’m really after happens to include forcing my opinions on churches.
Taking a compromise like this implicitly grants the premise that I want something other than purely civil marriage.Report
@Jason Kuznicki,
Interesting, I didn’t anticipate that objection. Any thoughts on (the indirectly related) case of Kenneth Howell?
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/09/fired-in-a-crowded-theaterReport
@Matthew Schmitz, There is no evidence that any “natural moral law” exists, and there is even less evidence that homosexuality violates this purported “law.”
There is a difference between teaching “this is what some Catholics believe about gay people” and “gay people are unnatural.”
Seems to me that Professor Howell crossed that line, perhaps inadvertently.Report
@Matthew Schmitz, and to be clear, I have no problem with anyone teaching the former. But the latter has no place in a public university.Report
@Matthew Schmitz,
I recall having written something about it somewhere. But I think Travis is basically right. But thould he have been disciplined? I still think formal discipline here uncalled for. Students like everyone else just need to develop a bit thicker skins. The world does not exist to validate your particular view of it. And the very last part of the world that should validate your pre-existing beliefs is college.Report
@Jason Kuznicki, practically speaking Matthew I think the ship has sailed in most parts of the country and federally for civil unions. If, say, Bush W and his Congress had rolled out a practical civil union bill in 2000 for same sex couples after he was inaugurated (and somehow enacted it over the flailing dead bodies of his own right wing) then we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. The movement for full civil gay marriage would have had a great deal of the force taken out if its sails.
However, conservatives and the GOP chose to roll for double or nothing. They pretended gays didn’t exist and to this day are silent on what should be done about them. They rolled the dice. The dice are rolling to a stop and it looks like the conservatives lost. Now suddenly conservatives are discovering a newfound affection for the compromise position? Games and politics and life don’t work that way. You don’t get to grab the hand of the roulette dealer after the ball has rolled hopelessly past your wager and say “I changed my mind; I’m going to just take half my wager and go.”
Why on earth would gay marriage advocates, with full civil marriage victory visibly moving steadily (but slowly, so slowly) into their grasp suddenly accept a ten year old half a loaf?Report
@Matthew Schmitz,
> The reason it isn’t, I think, is that most Americans
> don’t oppose gay marriage out of animus.
Most Americans who oppose gay marriage probably do indeed believe that they aren’t doing it out of animus. People are great at convincing themselves that their biases aren’t actually there. If I discard confirmation bias as a potential source of intellectual conflict, then well boy howdy my objections *can’t* be out of animus!
> They oppose it because they intuit that marriage
> is, by its very nature, oriented toward
> reproduction and child-rearing.
This is historically completely untrue, though, Matthew. If you intuit this, you’re not a very good scholar of the actual historical presence of marriage in human societies.
Marriage, historically, is almost entirely about the orderly disposition of real property, particularly the real property that is entailed in one form or another. In many societies, now, today, affection is *still* regarded as a tangential factor in a marriage. This “marriage is about raising children” mantra isn’t a justifiable position in cultural anthropology.
Now, of course, you can argue that marriage *ought* to be about reproduction and child-rearing, but then that fully discards a vast majority of the existing marriages. Already past child rearing age? We don’t need to put you in this protected category. Already done having kids? Never intend to have them in the first place? Find out after the fact that you’re biologically incapable? You don’t get to call yourself “married” any more, that’s for child rearing only.Report
@Pat Cahalan,
Can you break the news to my dad who got engaged again last week? Both of them are done having kids. Since I’m looking forward to the wedding I don’t want to be the one to tell him that his upcoming nuptials make a mockery of marriage.Report
@ThatPirateGuy, hey, we’re all sinners, dude.
Except for homosexuals. They’re unrepentant.Report
@Pat Cahalan,
I think http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/09/because-there-are-no-bigots/62850/this Ta-Nehisi post is quite apt on that point. The problem with a lot of bigotry, is that people aren’t conscious of their own.Report
a href=”#comment-70496″>@Matthew Schmitz, So you’re saying you want the law to remain as it is, but don’t want it to be enforced?
As Jason says, that seems to demonstrate a contradiction, doesn’t it? It seems you’re tacitly accepting that actually gay couples are not in fact like two random people who share a house, and that the law should recognise that difference by acknowledging that they have some of the rights usually associate with marriage.
Presumably that’s all the rights specifically connected to choosing to share property and legally consider yourself a single household, and none of those specifically connected to being able to make babies. Which is all of them. That was easy, wasn’t it?Report
My very straight and living-in-sin dad will not be happy if he gets reported.Report