Although since April 15th is the deadline for the tax that most often comes to mind, I'll throw a small word in concerning another kind of tax that unfairly discriminates between LGBT couples and their married heterosexual counterparts: inheritance/estate taxes.

In my state of Indiana, for example, if a husband dies, even though they may have only been hitched before a Justice of the Peace in Las Vegas three hours before, his wife pays absolutely nothing on property that becomes hers upon his demise. On the other hand, if the same-sex (or for that matter, an unmarried heterosexual) partner of decades, passes, perhaps leaving minor children to still care for and a mortgage to pay, the survivor gets a measly $ 100 exemption and then is liable for from 10% to 20% of the value. And in many cases a survivor may end up paying tax on the one-half they've considered to be already theirs. Since a shared house is often the major asset a couple has, I've known of many a situation where the survivor ends up having to sell hearth and home because of the inheritance tax bite.

I don't know how many other states have similar situations, but suspect Indiana is not unique. There is also a feature in the federal estate tax called the "marital deduction" which because of DOMA isn't available to anyone but opposite sex married couples.

And Alex, knowing your predisposition to pooh-pooh some marriage-related things as only the concerns of the wealthier members of our community, the inheritance tax disparity I've described above has easily fallen upon some pretty modest and even sub-modest income GLBT families that I've familiar with.

Unfortunately things like "Marriage Protection Amendments" in many states now hamstring both judges and legislators from doing anything about this kind of inequality.

The federal income tax rules are only unfair to unmarried couples or married same-sex couples where one person earns all or most of the income and the other is financially dependent. Equal earning couples are better off unmarried. Do we really want the law to favor the traditional, gendered family for whom the current tax code was written, even if similarly configured same-sex couples get that benefit as well? Not me. See http://beyondstraightandgaymarriage.blogspot.com/search/label/tax%20law