Legal experts, could the President order the IRS director to allow...

[Hippo_Tron]

Any couples, married or not, to file jointly. Put more simply, could he order the IRS director to allow homosexual couples the same tax incentives that married heterosexual couples have without legalizing gay marriage in the states or an act of congress changing the tax code?

[David Dunham]

1. No. DOMA would bar that.

[Kagemusha]

2. Wouldn't the defense of marriage act (sic) block that?

I don't know for sure but I'm raising the issue to spur discussion in the right direction. Seems to me that whole act was intended to stop the government from granting the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples, not just bar marriage per se.

[onenote]

5. In addition to DOMA

Under the Internal Revenue COde, there are only five choices of "filing status":
single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, head of household (with qualifying dependant) and qualifying widow(er) with dependent child. I don't know if its statutory or the result of a rule adopted by the IRS, but according to the instructions on Form 1040 "For federal tax purposes, a marriage means only a legal union between a man and a woman as husband and wife."

So either the statute would have to be changed (if that is the source of the definition quoted) or the IRS rules would have to be changed. I don't believe the President can just order the IRS to change its rules -- it would have to follow the process in the Administrative Procedure Act.

[onenote]

3. ALthough I haven't looked at the Internal Rev. Code, I don't see how

[David Dunham]

4. DOMA says the federal govt regards marriage as man-woman only