(Calif.) high court preserves tax breaks for domestic partners

[Newsjock]

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Domestic partners in California won the right to the same property tax breaks as husbands and wives under state law Thursday when the state Supreme Court turned down an appeal by county assessors.

The justices left intact an October ruling by an appeals court in Sacramento that allowed registered domestic partners - same-sex couples, or unmarried heterosexual couples in which one partner is at least 62 - to accept or inherit real estate from one another without new tax assessments.

That's a significant advantage under Proposition 13, the 1978 initiative that rolled back property taxes to 1 percent of value and limited increases to 2 percent a year. Prop. 13 allowed counties to reassess property to full market value when it was sold or changed ownership, often leading to a substantial tax increase.

... Geoff Kors, executive director of the gay-rights group Equality California, praised the court's action. "A surviving domestic partner should not lose the family home because he or she must pay taxes that a surviving married spouse does not," he said.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/03/BAR4U97BO.DTL

[ruggerson]

1. This is going to save a lot of people's homes for them

this is a very big deal.

[davidinalameda]

2. I thought this had been settled

this is a great ruling