What they never told us: Same-sex marriage would IMPROVE tax revenues!

[LearnedHand]

(How CONVENIENT!) I was browsing documents at the Congressional Budget Office's website (trying to find the document in which they said the tax burden had shifted overwhelmingly to the middle class), when I found a very interesting document titled, "Letter to the Honorable Steve Chabot regarding the potential budgetary impact of recognizing same-sex marriages."

Hmmm, I thought to myself. Why in the world would the CBO be studying the financial impact of same-sex marriages? So I decided to take a look-see; probably they were building yet another case for denying people who love one another the ability to marry.

Here's the VERY interesting line I found buried way down deep: "In some cases, recognizing same-sex marriages would increase outlays and revenues; in other cases, it would have the opposite effect. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that on net, those impacts would improve the budget's bottom line to a small extent: by less than $1 billion in each of the next 10 years (CBO's usual estimating period) (emphasis mine). That result assumes that same-sex marriages are legalized in all 50 states and recognized by the federal government."

(more here: http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=5559&sequence=0 )

If you can wade through the bureaucratic language, you should read this document! While CBO emphasizes -- over and over! -- that the impact to the budget would be small, this is nevertheless an important analysis. Wonder why we didn't hear about it when they published it in June?

Oh, wait. That WAS before the election, no?

[Marnieworld]

1. check my math but

is 1 billion over 10 years 1 trillion big ones? Jeez the repubs will do anything to decrease taxes-that's their real religion. Same sex couples to the rescue! They could save social security for chrissakes!

[tk2kewl]

2. no offense but

your math is about as good as juniors

"It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot numbers in it." - George W. Bush

[Marnieworld]

4. you're right duh

10 x 1 billion is 10 billion. I've only had 3 hours of sleep and I'm posting here to stay awake. :eyes: Shame

[tk2kewl]

5. LOL... could be more if you account for interest

but i was a bit worried there for a minute

[LearnedHand]

3. More than decreasing taxes:

Same-sex marriage could increase revenues! (Republicans don't care about decreasing taxes for gays!) Interesting how this positive finding -- from Congress's Budget Office itself -- was surpressed, and instead we're hit full in the face on Nov. 2 with all these anti-gay measures.

[Marnieworld]

7. I was being sarcastic

obviously they certainly wouldn't campaign on wanting to decrease taxes for gays. But is the marriage penalty tax? Gay people are already paying taxes (for less rights of course) so where's the increase.

[LearnedHand]

9. In the marriage penalty and estate taxes

(and sorry about missing the sarcasm; my bad! :spank: )

[Marnieworld]

10. that's ok I can't even count today.

;-)

[ArkDem]

6. 10 billion = 1 trillion......the new math

[Marnieworld]

8. ok ok my bad i'm stupid loopy from no sleep

would you believe I'm actually responsible for a whole computer network at work right now? God help them if something breaks down today.

[morgan2]

11. they seem to be talking about revenue

Not about the net impact of the decision. Yes it may increase revenue for the government, but it doesn't say if the increase in revenue would be greater than the increase in benefits paid by the government. At least from the part I read.

[LearnedHand]

12. The objective of the study WAS to evaluate impacts to federal revenues

I assumed they looked for both positive AND negative impacts to federal revenues; this is what the CBO does: study the impacts of policy changes or implementation. I probably didn't read far enough to get to the part about the payment of benefits, and when I try to go back to the site, it's suddenly "down." Go figure.