Elizabeth Warren Proposes Retroactive Tax Refunds for LGBTQ Spouses

Senator Elizabeth Warren may be spending a lot of her time campaigning for a presidential nomination this year, but she’s still doing her job.

On Thursday, she reintroduced the Refund Equality Act, a bill that would allow married same-sex couples who were unable to file joint federal taxes before 2013 to retroactively collect any tax refunds that would’ve been owed to them.

“The federal government forced legally married same-sex couples in Massachusetts to file as individuals and pay more in taxes for almost a decade,” Warren said. “We need to call out that discrimination and to make it right — Congress should pass the Refund Equality Act immediately.”

A previous version of this bill was proposed by Warren in 2017, but it didn’t gain the traction it needed to move forward. If it were to pass this time, it could mean up to $57 million in tax refunds for LGBTQ Americans.

While Warren is shooting out proposals on which she plans to campaign almost faster than it’s possible to keep up with them, a number of them center on repairing unjust income equalities. In addition to the Refund Equality Act, she has plans to cancel the majority of existing student loan debt, make child care affordable (an issue that disproportionately effects low-income and working-class families), tax households with a net worth of over $50 million at a higher rate, and create a program that would assist first time home buyers of color who were unjustly denied housing assistance by the federal government. And that’s just a start.

Warren also has made her support of the LGBTQ community known, from proposing actual policies and bills such as the Refund Equality Act, to more symbolic gestures such as signing Taylor Swift’s petition in support of the Equality Act.