Google To Add Pay To Cover a Tax For Gays 1036
GrApHiX42 writes "Starting on Thursday, Google is going to increase the salaries of gay and lesbian employees whose partners receive domestic partner health benefits, largely to compensate them for an extra tax they must pay that heterosexual married couples do not. Google is not the first company to make up for the extra tax. At least a few large employers already do. But benefits experts say Google's move could inspire its Silicon Valley competitors to follow suit, because they compete for the same talent."
Re:Well, heck! We can all be gay! (Score:3, Informative)
You really want to be gay-for-pay [wikipedia.org] ?
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:5, Informative)
I always say, if people go to hell for sodomy, then you're going to hell for shaving and wearing a cotton-poly blended T-shirt - both things mentioned in Leviticus...I don't think it specifically mentions T-shirts though.
Re:What? (Score:1, Informative)
Because they can't marry, and marriage confers tax benefits.
example for those who didn't get the point (Score:3, Informative)
A woman gets one or two periods, and then she's pregnant.
Roughly 9 months go by with nothing.
A baby is delivered. I suppose you could call that a period, maybe.
Breastfeeding suppresses the menstrual cycle. The woman can almost certainly go 6 months without a period, and stands a decent chance of going 18 months or more.
So there you go. Regular periods are NOT natural. They are a side effect of birth control.
Each kid born, and each kid nursed, reduces the risk of breast cancer. It's a 5% drop and a 7% drop, or the other way around. Assuming every kid is nursed, that should be about 12% to 13% risk reduction per kid. A woman naturally has about a dozen kids. Breast cancer is quite rare in countries where women birth early and often.
BTW, another side effect specific to the pill: reduced sex drive.
Re:So Much For Employee Privacy! (Score:5, Informative)
The employee would have to declare that they need domestic partner health benefits. Google isn't "snooping", it's information the employee is providing.
If they qualify for domestic partner health benefits, I should think so.
One man's benefit is other man's discrimination (Score:3, Informative)
Well, this is all in the eye of the beholder:
- Gay couples pay extra tax
vs.
- Non-gay couples get tax benefit
Or
- Non-Gay employees are negatively discriminated
vs.
- Gay employees are compensated
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:5, Informative)
It affects the people who are offended by it. They are offended--outraged even. And in a democratic society, these outraged people have a voice, and these voices in total are loud enough to force governments to punish the people who's behavior caused the offended people to become offended.
In fact, offense doesn't even really come into it. You can just have enough people who simply don't like another group and who will vote in punitive laws that will punish that group for simply existing. This is Democracy 101, otherwise known as the Tyranny of the Majority or at least the tyranny of the people who control the majority.
And this is largely how democracy is practiced today. And in case you think this only works one way, consider other things which have been banned/restricted like indoor smoking, fox hunting and chemical equipment ownership. In an age where the will of the people is absolute, people get what they vote for; or what other people paid to get them to vote for.
Re:Five months maternity leave? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:5, Informative)
[Anti-gay Christians] base this on a selective reading of the Old Testament
Now, I fully agree with you that the majority of anti-gay Christians are anti-gays who use the above passages to justify their bigotry, but hey, it's called bigotry for a reason.
However, I'll have to challenge you to select other passages from the bible that contradict or refute the ones quoted above. Sure, that filthy hippy Jesus waffled some peacenik tree hugging propaganda about loving and forgiving sinners, but I don't recall him saying that it wasn't a sin.
Re:So Much For Employee Privacy! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:5, Informative)
In the UK (and I believe the rest of the EU) they DO tax sanitary products. It took quite a lot of campaigning to get them placed in the 'reduced' rate of tax (5%) rather than the 'luxury' rate (currently 17.5%, soon to be 20%) as well. See here [guardian.co.uk] for example.
Re:Well, heck! We can all be gay! (Score:1, Informative)
Marriage has certain benefits which cannot be obtained through a contract. The main one is spousal privilege, which prevents someone from being compelled to reveal the content of private communication with their spouse.
Re:Still unfair.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Five months maternity leave? (Score:1, Informative)
With a risk of sounding presumptuous to our Little Brother, Norway, Sweden has even more, 480 days,
but with a more important twist, it is split in the middle by default!
Half for the woman, half for the man.
Equality works both ways! (with the addition of homosexuality, 4 ways, or is it 3?)
Btw. if you are sitting your ass one year, your doing it wrong.
I was on a 4 hour feeding-changing circle and could not wait to get back to the safety of my cubicle....
And now I do not think that my wife is sitting on her beautiful ass all day...
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not much to argue about the finer details of those particular scriptures; but I'd appreciate it if people recognized why Sodom and Gomorrah had to be expunged from the earth. The place was full of assholes! At one point they tortured some 11 year old girl to death for giving a starving man bread, because the girl was nice to someone (what a crime!). They tormented those in need. Any time someone new showed up, they turned a sadistic eye towards them immediately.
I think this is the most important lesson here. They didn't come to "have sex with" the newcomers; they came to brutally rape them.
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still unfair.. (Score:3, Informative)
Absolutely untrue. Common law marriages are not recognised for tax purposes, but they are (in certain situations) recognised for deciding ownership of things if you split up.
No, the term does not exist (in the UK), splitting property simply comes down to what you can prove. You paid for it by yourself, it's yours. You paid jointly without something to show how much came from each person you own it jointly. The point is cohabiting with someone you consider your partner confers no benefits or rights beyond cohabiting with friends or random people when you were a student. If you can find anything to the contrary I'll happily recant.
Re:Andrew (Score:3, Informative)
Marriage was a civil instritution first, long before it was religious.
Re:Still unfair.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Still unfair.. (Score:2, Informative)
Two alternate stating of the facts:
You chose to pay off your house despite that not being the optimal economic strategy. Between low mortgage rates, tax deductions, and the (average) high return of the market, you should have gotten the largest mortgage you could, and invested the money over the minimum payments in the market. You instead made a choice to sacrifice return on investment for peace of mind. This is the same choice I'm making, but it is a choice. The homeowner tax deduction theoretically improves social stability, which or elected officials think is in our best interest. Is it? I Don't know, but stop whining about the choice you made given the rules of the game we are currently playing.
With kids I felt the same way for a long time, but again, you're not seeing it from a 'neutral' point of view. There is no deduction for children, and you aren't subsidizing anything. Every PERSON gets a roughly $4000 exemption, and taxpayers (adults) can claim a standard or itemized deduction that has nothing to do with children. You can argue about the child tax credits, but that is a separate issue attempting to ameliorate poverty, where income limits apply. In general we have a progressive tax system to account for the diminishing incremental usefulness of money. The Y intercept of that progression starts around $4000 per person.
Re:Well, heck! We can all be gay! (Score:4, Informative)
I think we need two words for marriage.
We already have them. There's "marriage", a contractual relationship between two consenting adults and the state that has existed for thousands of years. There's also "wedlock", a religious institution. You can be married without ever entering a church or temple, but you are not wed. Similarly, you can be wed by a priest but if you never visit a town hall to sign the certificate, you're not married.
The problem is that the word "marriage" has been used for both types of marriage up until now and neither side (Civil or Religious) is going to give it up for an alternative word.
Not true. The term "marriage" has only been used interchangeably with "wedlock" since the Council of Trent, during which, in response to their declining power, the church decided to take over many aspects of the secular government. We should restore "marriage" to its original meaning, bereft of religious interference.
Re:Why so discriminating? (Score:4, Informative)
I say again, you are a pathetic and disgusting human being.
yes (Score:3, Informative)
the government should step in and put the brakes on the excesses of capitalism, absolutely
remember children toiling in factories? remember pinkertons goons kneecapping union organizers? remember mandatory 60 hour workweeks? all for pennies?
never hear do the gilded age, huh? out of your ignorance of economic history you want repeat our past mistakes?
if the government does not step in and put limitations on what a company can demand from an employee, and demand rules of fair compensation, then the company will gladly work employees to death as slaves and pay them nickles, in the name of competition, just as you say. this is historical fact
so thanks for being an asshole who hasn't learned from history
start here, you corporatist asshole:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_and_employment_law [wikipedia.org]
it's all about hard fought for protections of THE INDIVIDUAL'S LIBERTY from outright abuse by powerful, unregulated corporations
LEARN YOUR HISTORICAL FACT SO YOU DO NOT REPEAT PAST MISTAKES YOU FOOL
we NEED government regulations to SAVE us from the excesses of corporations, which are a FAR greater threat to your liberties and freedoms than any government ever could be. read your history, you uneducated goon
and this is where you call me a fascist or a communist, when i'm just talking about regulationg C-O-R-P-O-R-A-T-I-O-N-S, not individuals, you propagandized ignorant asshole
corporation != individual
corporate threat to individual > government threat to individual
LEARN YOUR FUCKING CONCEPTS, UNLEARN YOUR PROPAGANDIZED ASSOCIATIONS, THEN SPEAK
corporations, NOT governments, will happily destroy your freedoms. your democratically elected government is your only tool to protect yourself from them. THESE ARE FACTS OF LIFE. enough with the free market fundamentalist social darwinist libertarian fantasy fiction!