Geek News: Google to Increase Salaries to Cover Same-Sex Benefits Tax

Posted by on Jul 1, 2010 in Features, Geek News | 2 comments

According to an article on the New York Times, Google has introduced a new set of benefits for its gay and lesbian employees.

Starting today, Google will cover the cost of an extra tax charge that gay and lesbian employees have to pay when their partners receive domestic partner health benefits. Married couples don’t pay this extra tax, so it seems like a very good deed that Google has set out to do here. The increase in pay will also be retroactive all the way back to the beginning of the year.

According to a 2007 report by M. V. Lee Badgett, the director of the Williams Institute, employees with domestic partners pay around $1,069 more a year in taxes than married couples that have the same coverage. The Williams Institute is a research group that studies sexual orientation policy issues.

The new pay for Google employees with domestic partners will help to cover these costs, equalizing benefits for both gay and straight couples. The pay will only cover gay couples, said Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president for people operations, because straight couples can avoid the extra tax by marrying.

Google isn’t the first company to do something like this, but it’s still a great move in a direction of open and forward thinking.

About Tiarra


Tiarra Wantz is a comic book and sci-fi geek girl who enjoys reading, playing video games, creating typography art, and comparing everything to “that one episode of TNG where…” Tiarra lives in Las Vegas with the love of her life, Dan, where they live together with two cuddly kittens named Panda Face and Ser Pounce-a-lot and a precocious pup named Pippin.

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  • http://www.PodCulture.net Brad Bowyer

    What about straight couples who don’t happen to be married? Will Google’s extra benefits cover them as well? If not…it would smack of discrimination a bit.

  • Tiarra

    @Brad: “The pay will only cover gay couples, said Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president for people operations, because straight couples can avoid the extra tax by marrying.”