The Equal Dignity for Married Taxpayers Act of 2025 systematically updates the Internal Revenue Code to use gender-neutral language when referring to married couples and spouses, without altering existing tax rules.
Ron Wyden
Senator
OR
The Equal Dignity for Married Taxpayers Act of 2025 is a legislative update designed to modernize the Internal Revenue Code by ensuring gender-neutral language is used when referencing married taxpayers and their spouses. This bill systematically replaces outdated gendered terms like "husband and wife" or "his" with inclusive terms such as "married couple" and "spouse." The changes are purely linguistic, ensuring consistency across tax rules without altering any existing tax liabilities or deductions.
Tax Code Gets a Major Language Cleanup: Swapping 'Husband and Wife' for 'Spouse' in Hundreds of Sections
The newly introduced Equal Dignity for Married Taxpayers Act of 2025 is essentially a massive, overdue administrative cleanup of the entire Internal Revenue Code (IRC). This bill doesn't change how much you owe the IRS or what deductions you can claim; instead, it systematically replaces every instance of gender-specific marital language—think “husband and wife,” “he,” and “his”—with neutral terms like “spouse,” “married couple,” and “the individual.”
The Great Gender-Neutral Tax Code Makeover
This isn't just about political correctness; it’s about making sure the tax code accurately reflects the reality of all legally married couples. For example, Section 2 of the bill dictates that across the entire IRC, language related to joint filing, property ownership (like Section 6166(b)(2)), and estate taxes (Sections 2040 and 2513) will now consistently refer to a “married couple” or “spouse.” If you’ve ever had to wade through tax documents, you know how often they reference “his spouse” or “husband and wife.” This bill is scrubbing those phrases out, standardizing the language so it’s inclusive of every married pairing.
Swapping 'His' for 'The Taxpayer's'
Section 3 of the Act handles the thousands of specific pronoun changes. For instance, in rules covering retirement accounts (Section 408) or basic income tax definitions (Section 1), the phrase “his spouse” is being replaced with “the individual’s spouse.” For those dealing with things like dependency exemptions (Section 151(b)) or medical deductions (Section 213), the bill specifies the change to “the taxpayer’s spouse.” This level of detail extends to updating references to “his home” when discussing residency requirements in tax contexts like moving expenses (Section 217), changing it to “the individual’s home.”
Real-World Impact: Consistency and Clarity
For the average person, this bill won't change your tax bill, but it modernizes the language you encounter when dealing with the IRS. For tax professionals, it removes minor ambiguities and ensures that the spirit of laws recognizing all marriages is reflected in the letter of the law. Think of it as finally updating a legacy software system—the functions remain the same, but the interface is finally clean, consistent, and built for the modern era. This is a straightforward, beneficial change that updates the tax code to match the reality of who is filing taxes today, ensuring equal dignity for every married taxpayer under the law.