The (SAFE) Tax Filing Act

The SAFE Tax Filing Act doesn’t come with sparkles, streamers, or a celebrity endorsement. It simply offers a straightforward fix to a quietly cruel corner of the tax code. One that, until now, required survivors of domestic abuse or abandonment to keep their tax lives tangled with their abusers.

This bill says: let them file as single. That’s it. No joint returns, no forced disclosures, no bureaucratic guilt-tripping. Just the kind of boring, meaningful change that restores autonomy.

As someone who spends an unusual number of hours untangling tax knots, I can tell you this is a great policy shift. It gives survivors the right to not have their financial autonomy held hostage by outdated marital filing rules. Married filing separately isn’t a consolation prize; it’s a financial penalty dressed in polite language.

The AICPA’s support is reassuring. Not because they’re infallible, but because it's nice when professionals agree on something that’s both humane and technically reasonable. Now, assuming the IRS doesn't swirl this into a labyrinth of paperwork and contradictory guidance, we may actually be looking at progress. Let’s hope it quietly sails through.