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Last Thursday, some tax relief for gay employees was added to the long list of world-renowned benefits enjoyed by workers at Mountain View’s Google, such as free food, massages and laundry services.
Google says its gay workers, or “Gayglers” as they call themselves, will be paid a little extra to make up for the higher taxes they must pay for health insurance for their partners. The move helps to ensure that gay Google employees are on equal footing with straight, married employees who do not have to pay taxes on health insurance for their spouses.
Google isn’t saying how much the new benefit will cost or how many Google employees qualify, but a 2007 study by M.V. Lee Badget for the Williams Institute says that “employees with partners now pay on average $1,069 per year more in taxes than would a married employee with the same coverage.”
Laszlo Bock, Google’s vice president of people operations, told the New York Times that Google decided to offer the benefit after the disparity was brought to the company’s attention by a gay employee.
That also spurred the company to examine its other benefits for disparities. In addition to covering the health insurance tax, Google will now allow gay employees to take up to 12 weeks off every year to care for their partners, just as straight employees are allowed to do for their spouses under the Family Medical Leave Act.
Google was also able to work with their insurance carrier to get rid of a one-year waiting period for gay employees before being able to obtain infertility benefits. Infertility is “now defined as the inability to conceive a child with no stipulations on trying for one year,” wrote Googler Cynthia Yeung in the Official Google Blog post on the subject.
Google is not offering the domestic partner health insurance tax compensation to unmarried straight employees, who also pay the tax when covering their partners. Those employees can avoid the tax by getting married, the company says.
Kudos to Google for joining the club. Yahoo has done this for years. Many other Silicon Valley companies do, as well.
Of course, it’s a shame that such measures are necessary in the face of discriminatory legislation such as DOMA and Prop 8. Fortunately, the relevant portions of DOMA were struck down yesterday in court, overturning the federal ban on same-sex marriage. Next up: overturning Prop 8! Then these kinds of compensatory measures won’t be necessary.
For a second there I thought you were going to bring up Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell as well. Thanks for sparing us.
“Sparing us?” Your concern for the civil rights of your fellow citizens is underwhelming, Curt.
As for DADT, as far as I’m concerned, it’s protecting the best and brightest among us by keeping them out of the military and out of harm’s way.
You guys should stop complaining cuz one the health care we have now isnt as good as it was supposed to be. also the law has just been signed give it a try u guys are too hard on democrats they went to college and we voted for most of these people.so if u want to say u have the right to choose tell that to ur congress men or state official. as for obama people are just tryin to make it look like america made a mistake he has done things to help us and we had a full 8 years of a terrible president and i will be so as happy as ever when a obama fixes bush’s mistakes. You can find full medical coverage at the lowest price from http://bit.ly/chE6zp obama has to put up with the wo0rld judging his every move and trying to fix the mess we are in we are lucky anyone wants to be our president. STOP COMPLAINING AND GIVE HIM A BREAK. i wanna see one of yall do what he sas done. some people are just so ignorant.
Equal rights for sodomites?
What next?
Equal rights for polygamists?
What’s wrong with “equal rights for sodomites,” MV Citizen?
Please do tell.
Todd
MV Citizen: The definition of sodomy is so broad that nearly every sexually active person alive today is a sodomite. Heterosexual sodomites have rights that are denied to all homosexuals, sodomite or not. (Not all homosexuals are sodomites, by the way.)
And frankly, I don’t care if consenting adults wish to solemnize polyamorous relationships. No skin off my nose. Who are we to dictate the terms of others’ happiness? And who are we to judge their relationships?
I am glad to hear this news, it’s perfectly fine by me. Also the idea of Googlepods flying around MV and everyone living and working in a perfect little universe is awesome. However, I personally was quite disappointed at the lack of “neighborliness” displayed by Google on the 4th of July. Not only did they block off all parking lots, forcing everyone going to Shoreline to hear the symphony and see firworks fork over $10 on top of the ticket price AND wait in a huge line which delayed entry (we missed 1/3 of the program) BUT they had the nerve to station big guys in black shirts to frown and cars and wave people off who tried to get into the lots or even LOOKED LONGINGLY at them!! I’m telling you, those lots were completely empty and could have cut the wait time by a huge percentage for hundreds of families w/kids, strollers, and the elderly. I thought that was quite obnoxious and unnecessary. Not a good neighbor after all.
Those were the “Google Black Shirts”, similar to Mussolini’s “Brown Shirts”, or Peron’s “No Shirts” (Descamisadas).
I do not know any logical reason that a corporation (or a society) should reward sodomy, homosexuality, polygamy, incest, bestiality or any other deviant sexual behavior.
I believe in equal rights for all people, but practicing sexually deviant behavior does not make anybody special or deserving of any special privileges or rights.
mv citizen: society shouldn’t “reward” *anyone* based on sexuality, including heterosexuality. but since we do, then those “rewards” should be awarded equally.
The big story here is not that consenting adults are being given incentives for getting married, settling down, and supporting each other in a stable household. It’s that so-called conservatives are somehow able to look at this and then sneer about rewarding deviant behavior. And they call us sex-obsessed.
Yay Google.
I’m still trying to figure out how being gay equals being the “best and the brightest” among us??? Nobody else thought that comment made no sense? Could the poster please explain in more detail how being gay makes you smarter than a straight person?
The answer is no one can dare challenge the gay community on any statement or risk being labeled a hater. So I guess all the less than the best and the brightest serving in the military should just come home and not take a stand against regimes that view homosexuality as deviant behavior?
this is gay.. i’m out