Sponsors (45)
Introduced June 26, 2025 by Ronald Lee Wyden · Last progress June 26, 2025
The bill modernizes and gender‑neutralizes tax‑code language and standardizes terminology to reduce confusion and administrative errors, at the cost of short‑term implementation burdens, transitional filing risks, and some legal uncertainty that will require IRS guidance to resolve.
All taxpayers: Tax-code language becomes gender-neutral and removes gendered pronouns, reducing confusion and preventing misinterpretation when filing returns.
Taxpayers and the IRS: Standardizing terminology and modernizing headings across multiple Internal Revenue Code provisions simplifies cross-references and reduces ambiguity, likely lowering administrative errors and IRS processing delays.
Married taxpayers and estates: Clarifying that married couples (and their estates) are treated as one person for specified provisions simplifies application of certain tax rules (e.g., below‑market loan treatment, partnership interests), making compliance and planning more straightforward for affected married taxpayers.
Taxpayers and practitioners: Some substantive wording changes could alter tax interpretation (e.g., replacement clause in §42(j)(5)(C)), creating legal uncertainty until the IRS issues guidance or courts clarify the effects.
Taxpayers, tax preparers, payroll systems, and software vendors: One‑time implementation and update costs to revise forms, instructions, payroll and tax‑preparation software, and compliance systems.
Taxpayers and tax preparers: Transitional risk of confusion and filing errors while practitioners and software vendors update to the new language and forms.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Rewrites gendered spouse and pronoun language across the Internal Revenue Code to use gender-neutral, taxpayer-centered terms and replaces one specified clause in a credit provision.
Makes gendered and binary spouse language in the federal tax code gender-neutral by replacing words like “husband,” “wife,” “his,” and “her” with neutral terms such as “the spouse of the taxpayer,” “the taxpayer’s,” or “married individual.” It directs comprehensive text changes across many Internal Revenue Code provisions and replaces one specific clause in an affordable housing/credit provision; no new spending, deadlines, or agencies are created. The changes are mainly editorial and stylistic to update pronouns and spouse references, but apply widely across tax rules and will require updates to tax forms, instructions, regulations, and software; one substituted clause (content not shown here) may have substantive effect where it replaces an existing rule.