 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||||||||||||
| about us |
Williams Institute Executive Director Brad Sears Testifies Before California Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation19
June 2006 Professor Brad Sears, Executive Director of UCLA Law's Williams Institute, testified before a California Senate Committee today that allowing registered domestic partners to file state income taxes jointly would result in only a small reduction in tax revenues. According to Sears, who testified before the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation on SB 1827, allowing registered same-sex partners the same option to file jointly as married couples would “decrease income tax revenues by approximately $8 million per year, or less than .01% of the State's $90 billion budget.” In 2004, when the California legislature passed AB 205, California's comprehensive domestic partnership legislation, it provided registered domestic partners with almost all of the rights of married couples under state law. One of the most significant exceptions was the exclusion of the right to file income taxes jointly. Although the Williams Institute
provided the legislature with an economic analysis that
projected net savings for the State of tens of millions of
dollars each year, then-Governor Gray Davis refused to sign
AB 205 if any one item of the State's budget would be
negatively affected. Thus, the right to file jointly was
specifically taken out of AB 205 during the final days of
its consideration.
| ||||||