DOMA cost us at least $645.00 last year

We finalized and filed our taxes yesterday. One of the "neat" consequences of having a Civil Union in New Jersey is the way we need to file.

Under the tax laws, New Jersey considers us married and we need to file our taxes as such. As a result, we have to prepare four different tax returns: our "single" Federal forms, our joint State return, and a theoretical Federal return, as if we were allowed to file jointly, which forms the basis of the joint state return.

This means that we need to do double the work to file our taxes, preparing four returns instead of two. Even our tax software is no help, not letting us merge our two single Federals and forcing us to start the theoretical from scratch, no mean feat when your returns get as complex as ours do.

That, however, was not the big problem we encountered. For us, the actual cost of marriage inequality can be calculated. It's $645.00.

In 2007, the first year we had to file jointly in New Jersey, our household income was pretty much divided evenly between the two of us. Last year, however, we more or less had just one "breadwinner" and one "stay at home" spouse, the old "traditional" family model. After years and years of hearing the right wingers scream about the "marriage penalty" I was shocked to find that if we had been allowed to file our Federal returns jointly, instead of as "single" people, our tax burden would have been lighter. To be more specific, our tax refund would have gone from $1,718.00 to $2,363.00.

It's not often you can put an actual dollars and cents figure on aspects of the ban on gay marriage, but tax day brought just one of many costs home to us.

If everyone filed jointly, the government would not have enough money to bail out the greedy sons-of-bitches who brought America to the Greater Depression.