Time Warner To Pay Gay Couple's Tax On Benefits
- By
- Carlos Santoscoy
- | August 24, 2012
Media giant Time Warner will begin absorbing the extra tax gay workers in domestic partnerships, civil unions or marriages pay for spousal health benefits.
Unlike heterosexual employees, employer-provided health benefits offered to the partners of gay workers are counted as taxable income by the IRS (unless the partner is considered a dependent), because their unions are not recognized by federal agencies. Blocking the IRS from recognizing gay unions is the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that defines marriage as a heterosexual union.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest gay rights advocate, announced the change in a blog post.
“HRC worked with Time Warner in taking this next step toward full equality for their LGBT employees,” the group stated.
A report released in 2007 by M. V. Lee Badgett, research director at the Williams Institute, found that gay employees with partners pay, on average, $1,069 per year more in taxes than would a married employee with the same coverage.
Time Warner is joining a growing list of companies equalizing benefits for gay workers, including Microsoft, Yahoo!, Bank of America, Google, Morgan Stanley, Facebook and American Express, among others.