Google to offer gay staff extra pay to allow for tax inequality with straight couples

By Scott Warren

Last updated at 6:14 PM on 1st July 2010

INTERNET giant Google today began paying its gay staff more than  heterosexual employees in the latest example of its lavish perks culture.

Lesbian and homosexual staff will get extra wages to make up for higher taxes  they have to pay.

Google is already famed as an extremely benevolent employer, giving its  workforce free food, free laundry and five months’ maternity leave on full pay.

New payment: Gay Google employees will now be given extra pay to allow for a tax that is not levied on straight employees

And given the competitive nature of California’s Silicon Valley, where  companies use extra perks to attract top employees, more are expected to follow  suit, experts said.

The search engine decided it was only fair to bump up the salaries of its gay  staff, a spokesman said.

Under U.S. law, when a firm offers health insurance as a benefit for an  employee’s partner, it is tax-free for married couples but taxable income for  gays.

Google will make up the difference in additional pay, on average £650 a year.

The move was announced today and is being backdated to January 1.

The firm will also speed up infertility benefits for lesbian and homosexual  staff and include their partners in its compassionate leave policy.

How many of Google’s 20,600 employees will be affected by the changes is  unclear, but the company’s internal gay group — who call themselves Gayglers —  counts around 700 members. 
The measures only apply to the workforce in the U.S.

Personnel chief Laszlo Bock, Google’s ‘vice president for people operations,’  said the firm decided to act when an employee pointed out the disparity.

‘We said, “You’re right, that doesn’t seem fair,”‘ he said. He declined to  reveal how much the changes will cost Google, which made profits of £4 billion  last year.

The company is renowned for its innovative streak, and others usually follow  its lead.

‘It could have a ripple effect. When you have a high-profile company doing  anything, that tends to get into the mind of the culture, and it can have a  more diffuse effect,’ said corporate benefits consultant Kathleen Murray.

But Google has also earned a sinister reputation thanks to blunders by its  controversial Street View service, which has sent ‘camera cars’ to take  pictures along every road in Britain.

On Wednesday Claire Rowlands, 25, told how she was stunned to see a photograph  of her three-year-old son Louis naked on Street View.

He had been snapped as he played in his grandmother’s garden in Walkden,  Greater Manchester.

Google blurred out the registration plate of a car on the drive of the house –  but the image of Louis, who was wearing nothing but his shoes, was uncensored.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland — Icelandic Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir has married her long-term partner, her office said on Monday, making her the world’s first national leader with a same-sex spouse.

Sigurdardottir, 67, married writer Jonina Leosdottir on Sunday, the day a new law took effect defining marriage as a union between two consenting adults regardless of sex.

The two had had a civil union for years and changed this into a marriage under the new law, which was approved by parliament earlier this month.

The new law was celebrated at a church service on Sunday, which was also the international day for homosexual rights.

The prime minister’s office said Sigurdardottir had sent a message to the gathering saying the new law was a cause for celebration for all Icelanders and adding: “I have today taken advantage of this new legislation.”

The Lutheran State Church has long been split on the issue of same-sex marriage and the church congress in April did not unanimously support the new legislation. The bishop of Iceland has urged parish ministers to comply with the law.

Sigurdardottir, who has children from a previous heterosexual marriage, is the world’s only openly gay prime minister but her sexuality has never been an issue in Iceland, which, like the other Nordic states, has a history of tolerance.

Copyright 2010 Reuters.

Fantastic.