It took two months and the simulation of more than 900 tax returns (see methodology here) for Tara Siegel Bernard and Ron Lieber to crunch the numbers for an article in the NYT which calculates the extra expenses a hypothetical same-sex couple would face over the course of a lifetime compared with their hypothetical heterosexual counterparts.
"Our goal was to create a hypothetical gay couple whose situation
would be similar to a heterosexual couple's. So we gave the couple two
children and assumed that one partner would stay home for five years to
take care of them. We also considered
the taxes in the three states that have the highest estimated gay
populations — New York, California and Florida. We gave our couple an
income of $140,000, which is about the average income in those three
states for unmarried same-sex partners who are college-educated, 30 to
40 years old and raising children under the age of 18. Here is
what we came up with. In our worst case, the couple's lifetime cost of
being gay was $467,562. But the number fell to $41,196 in the best case
for a couple with significantly better health insurance, plus lower
taxes and other costs."
Also: "Nearly all the extra costs that gay couples face would be erased if the federal government legalized same-sex marriage. "
