-By Warner Todd Huston
The Illinois Review noticed an interesting thing about the instructions for the State of Illinois 2012 tax returns. Illinois is urging gay couples to file as “married.”
As IR notes, tax filings may be a bit confusing for same sex couple in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln allows for civil unions, but the federal government does not, so figuring out how to file may be a bit of a challenge.
The instructions get even more confusing because the Illinois civil union law does not require couples to denote whether they are same sex when filing for civil union licenses. However, the Illinois tax form and instructions explicitly refer to same-sex couples civil unions and denotes other, special instructions for opposite sex civil unions.
At the top of the tax form, the IL-1040 has a check box option for same-sex couples that reads: “D. Check if same-sex civil union return (see Instructions)”
Here is a scan of the front page of the instruction booklet…
Here is a scan of the actual instructions…
Click on image to see the actual instruction page in full size.
This is, we can see, one of the confusing drawbacks to having states do one thing while the feds do another without either having fast a sure rules about what tax filers should do.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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