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LGBT couples often face additional financial hurdles
• Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) couples - and individuals - often face significant financial hurdles compared to their heterosexual counterparts. According to Chris Kollaja, a certified public accountant and partner at A.L. Nella & Company in San Francisco, California, LGBT couples often incur higher costs for everything from income taxes to employee benefits to adoptions because of prevailing laws and tax regulations. • For example: • • In states where gay marriage is not legal, same-sex couples must file separate income tax returns, as with unmarried heterosexual couples. Where it is legal, if they want to file a joint state return they must each file an individual federal return and then complete a "mock" joint federal return and use that data to calculate their joint state return. • • Company-provided domestic partner benefits are considered imputed income by the IRS and added to the employee's taxable income. Also, whereas opposite-sex married couples can use pretax dollars to pay for medical insurance premiums, domestic partners cannot. • • Heterosexual spouses can receive up to 50 percent of their spouse's Social Security benefits if he or she is still alive, can collect their dead spouse's benefit if it's higher than their own, and receive a $255 lump-sum spousal death benefit. None of these benefits apply to same-sex spouses. • • Heterosexual married couples can contribute up to $5,000 a year to a spousal IRA for a non-working spouse; same-sex couples cannot. • • If one spouse in a heterosexual marriage enters a nursing home and applies for (Continued on page 12)
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