The other day, I was thinking about the stories I've heard about women marrying themselves or pets. When the term marriage was used, it is not a legal marriage. And when I say legal marriage, I mean that the couple cannot use the Married Filing Joint status on their tax return. It is such a shame though, I would love to legally marry myself or a stray cat in order to get the tax benefit of using the Married Filing Joint status. Maybe in the next 20 years, that will become an option but it is doubtful that the IRS would allow the union of a man to a pet rock to qualify for using the Married Filing Joint status. That would lead to a significant loss of tax revenue.
Whenever the rules of any sort of system change, there are usually unintended consequences. For example, if corporations are forced to increase the minimum wage, there will be a number of employees that either get fired, get their hours cut, or are forced to work harder. In the case of same sex marriages, it is quite recent that same sex marriages gained all of the benefits from traditional marriage. As of August 29th, 2013, the IRS and the US Department of Treasury ruled that same sex marriages will be treated the same as traditional marriages when it comes to "all federal tax provisions where marriage is a factor, including filing status, claiming personal and dependency exemptions, taking the standard deduction, employee benefits, contributing to an IRA and claiming the earned income tax credit or child tax credit."
The loophole here is that you don't actually have to be a homosexual in order to enter into a same sex marriage. And even if being a homosexual was a requirement, how would the government go about in testing or proving sexual orientation?
Since this ruling is less than two years old, there is not much information readily available on google about straight men marrying other straight men in order to get tax benefits. Using the search term, as of 4/19/2015, straight men marrying other straight men for tax benefits, brings up Ask Meta Filter, reddit, and a LGBT blog.
After doing a quick scan of Ask Meta Filter, one issue of Marriage Fraud came up. This was illustrated in foreigners marrying Americans with the sole intent of bypassing the immigration process in order to gain citizenship. According to justice.gov, being accused of marriage fraud can carry the penalty of 5 years imprisonment and a fine of $250,000. The link goes into great detail about the green card marriage but it doesn't go into any details about same sex marriages. This is to be expected as this is a very recent phenomenon. This sort of law seems like a big cop out though. The government is trying to make purpose/intent illegal. In this case, the government is trying to make illegal a natural response/reaction to the rules the government set forth in the first place. But that is the kind of legal system we have.
The third article I found stated that a heterosexual couple in New Zealand got married as part of a radio contest stunt in order to win free rugby tickets to the Rugby World Cup in England. This was met with backlash in that it offended LGBT protesters that fought hard for the right. But this does make the point that the institution of marriage means so little that two BFFs would tie the knot in order to get free rugby tickets. If anything, this article illustrates two friends that would do almost anything for each other and a free pair of rugby tickets. That is how you know for sure you have a true friend.
Now, because people are asking questions about hetero same sex marriages, I am confident that this is already happening. It is just a very small portion of the population that is doing this, but I am pretty sure that as the economy gets tougher with the mismanagement of this country, this crazy trend of hetero same sex marriages will increase in the future. Eventually, this will get media coverage and the federal government will eventually step in and try to crack down on this phenomenon.
The reason for this is that people just can't keep their mouths shut. In practice a heterosexual couple could just apply for a marriage license, pay a small fee for the paperwork, and then they would be legally married. They don't need a wedding, a ring, or the need to tell anyone about it. Both men can still date women. They are not required to be intimate with each other, they don't need to adopt children, and they don't even need to live together. They just need to get the license and proceed with life as if nothing had ever happened. The only thing the couple has to do is collaborate with each other when they file their taxes. Needless to say, it is implied that these men have no ambition or aspirations to get married to women in the future and this is quite reasonable. Married people are slowly disappearing. In the 20 - 34 age demographic, 70% of men are not married. A portion of these men will get married in the future, but given that married couples make up less than 50% of American households, it is likely that married couples will continue to decline in the future.
However, if a heterosexual couple went through with this idea, they would feel a good sense of pride in using a cheap method to save a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a year. They would then start telling other people about the crazy idea and inevitably more people would start engaging in same sex marriages for the pure reason of tax benefits. This would then draw media attention and public backlash. I guess this is a good as time as any to say that I do not encourage or condone engaging in a same sex marriage in order to get tax benefits. This idea could be considered marriage fraud even though it is not explicitly stated.
Obviously, there are several reasons why this is a very small phenomenon today. First off, a lot of men do want to find a nice wife one day and get married. If he is already engaged in a same sex marriage, he will have to get a divorce in order to legally marry a wife. Speaking of divorce, a same sex marriage is still subject to the same divorce laws as traditional marriages. One partner could decide to rob the other partner if there is a large disparity in the net worth of both individuals. The second reason is social stigma. Both individuals could try to keep the marriage a secret but it is inevitable that one of the two would tell a few people then the whole community thinks that the two individuals are LGBT.
I'll wrap things up with an idea of how much money a hetero same sex marriage could save. I will state that the savings increase as the salary of the individuals increase. There is very little benefit using the Married Filing Joint status if both men are close to broke. Since I cannot analyze every situation, I've included the 2014 IRS tax table here. I will analyze a very basic example and look at only one factor, the tax rate of the Married Filing Jointly status versus the Single status. Obviously, there are more benefits but this is just to provide a very simple example.
For example, Adam and Bill both work as engineers and both have the same salary. After accounting for the personal exemption and standard deduction, each man has a taxable income of $40,000. Both men owe $5,863 each. However, if Adam and Bill file using the Married Filing Joint status, both men would owe only $5,096 each. This filing status would save almost $767 each man. Over the period of 10 years, each man would save $7,670, minus the cost of the marriage license, by simply getting into a same sex marriage.
The savings become more drastic the more money that is made. If Adam and Bill were very well off and had a taxable income of $60,000, the tax savings in using the Married Filing Jointly status would be $2,767 each man versus the single status. Over a 10 year period, each man would have saved $27,670, minus the cost of the marriage license, by entering into a same sex marriage.
Once again, straight men marrying other straight men is a very small phenomena today, but people respond to incentives. By giving same sex marriages the same benefits as traditional marriages in 2013, the government created the unintended consequence of straight men marrying each other for tax benefits. I haven't yet heard any news stories about this happening in America, but it is only a matter of time before this story pops up on the news.
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