Can I Include My Domestic Partner in My Employee Benefit Package?
Depending on your employer and to a lesser extent the state you live in, you may be able to claim your domestic partner in your benefits package. An increasing number of companies offer the same benefits that are available for employees' spouses to domestic partners, while some offer partial benefits.
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Employers
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Employers increasingly offer the option to include employees' domestic partners in benefits packages. Human resource departments see the move as a relatively low-cost method for recruiting and retaining top talent. In most states, however, offering equal benefits is a matter of company policy. Some companies still opt to offer partial benefits or none at all.
The West Coast
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California, Oregon and Washington have "everything but marriage" domestic partnership laws. These laws ensure that registered domestic partners must receive the same treatment that spouses are entitled to under state law. Hence, whenever employers offer benefits to the spouses of employees, the domestic partners of employees are automatically included.
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Government
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Over 100 city and county governments offer equal benefits to the partners of employees. California mandates that all contractors also provide benefits to their employees' partners, as do a dozen city governments as of 2011. All entities in the federal government, however, are bound by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act not to recognize any relationship other than marriage between one man and one woman.
Issues
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Thanks to DOMA, the Internal Revenue Service taxes employee benefits extended to domestic partners, even when spouses can deduct the cost of group insurance policies from their taxes. Google leads a small group of employers that compensate employees for this extra tax burden. Employers on the other end of the debate argue that extending benefits encourages fraud and adds expenses. The LGBT Campus website reports that no fraud cases involving domestic partner benefits have been reported and that the expense of partner benefits is less than the added expense of an employee having a baby, which is considered routine and normal by most companies.
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