Proposed tax code marriage definition change pulled

DES MOINES – You know it's an election-year legislative session when a tax policy cleanup bill draws controversy.

Officials in the state Department of Revenue have been asked to redraft Senate Study Bill 3200 to drop sections that attempted to craft gender-neutral language regarding married couples into the tax code.

“It's essentially trying to modernize the code as it relates to the new definition of marriage,” said Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

The proposed changes would replace references to husband and wife with the term married persons or spouse as appropriate to the context. The Iowa code currently uses the federal Internal Revenue code in determining marital status but federal law does not recognize same-sex couples as married taxpayers.

The proposed change attempted to eliminate that provision by determining marital status pursuant to the laws of Iowa, which referred to the case law language of an Iowa Supreme Court ruling which paved the way for same-gender marriage by striking down as unconstitutional a 1998 statute defining marriage as only between one man and one woman.

However, concern that the language could invite amendments – such as the effort to bring the marriage question before voters as a proposed change to the Iowa Constitution – sent the measure back to the drawing board to be recast without the marriage issue.

“It certainly would be an invitation for a lot of discussion. I think we have enough to deal with,” said Sen. Pam Jochum, D-Dubuque, head of a subcommittee assigned to consider the measure. “We will not be doing those last two sections of the bill.”

“I would agree that this would attract amendments that we don't intend to take up,” added Bolkcom. “There's other policy in this policy bill that we want to tackle.”

Jim McNulty of the state revenue agency said there won't be a practical affect of removing the sections because his department adopted administrative changes after last April's court decision that allow same-sex couples to file jointly or separately on a joint return and receive the same tax benefits as opposite-gender couples.