Tax Day

Last night I sat down and finally finished my taxes. I did them originally in January, and we filed Ms. P's then as well, but she was getting money back and I was owing money, and so I sent hers and kept mine so we could eke a few more dollars of interest out of those funds.

I'm confronted with the extra-legal status of our relationship at many turns: when I sign up for an IRA and have to claim myself as single and my beneficiary as my non-spouse; when I get a new job and have to fill out forms; when I answer demographic surveys. But nowhere is this confrontation as prickly for me as it is when I sit down to do our taxes.

All of our money is joint money. We have a shared savings account, a shared checking account, and a shared money market account. Our retirement money is separate, as IRAs require of everyone, but our income and our expenses are so intertwined that there's no sense of "hers" and "mine"; there is only ours.

And yet, when I sit down to do taxes, there is hers and there is mine. Right now it's fairly simple: paychecks officially come to one or the other of us; interest income counts as mine because the account is "officially" mine, despite her being a joint owner; 401(k) payout taxes are officially mine. But what happens when we adopt a child? What happens if we, at some point down the line, buy a house together?

I know straight couples who buy houses together and have children together and choose not to marry. They willingly take on the extra burdens of figuring out taxes and apportioning fiscal responsibility in the most advantageous way. But we did choose to marry, and our choice has no bearing on our taxes, or our legal relationship to one another, or our ability to protect our family from fiscal disaster.

If we were able to file jointly as married, our taxes would have come out to about a wash and they would have been done three months ago. If we were able to file jointly as married, we would get the full "refund" of the economic stimulus package, instead of only getting half of it because Ms. P is far below the cut-off and this year, because of the aforementioned 401(k) fun, I'm over the line.

If we were able to file jointly as married, our outsides would match our insides, and we wouldn't exist in a kind of reality-shifting no-man's land that questions, at every turn, the actuality of our lives. There are days when the constant stress of having to assert the reality our lives, our relationship, our family becomes visible as stress, as a constant activity we engage in, and this is one of those days.

Comments

[dale]

I'm sorry, Pro.

[Terminal Degree]

I'm sorry. :(

[udge]

Agreed: it's a load of nonsense.

Could you not employ Mrs. P in some capacity, to bring her income up to the limit and thus lower yours?

[udge]

"Ms. P", sorry, I do apologise :-)

[Pronoia]

Udge, that's a hysterical idea! I think it would backfire, though, by making her subject to self-employment taxes. Better to just grump along as we are, I think.

[udge]

Well, I don't know how American taxes are evaluated, but here in Germany it makes economic sense because she would be able to claim all kinds of expenses against her self-employment income. Talk it over with your accountant.

[What Now?]

D. and I are in the same situation. The way we handle it is that I itemize my taxes, taking credit for all of our charitable contributions, interest paid on mortgage, etc., and she takes the standard deductible. It's a pain in the ass, and it takes much longer for us to do our taxes, but we actually get back more money than we would otherwise. For me, this turns doing taxes into a subversive activity in which I get back at the federal government for not recognizing our relationship.