Patriarchal Arrangement

Husband and I went to H&R Block last night to get our taxes done. We lived in two states last year plus I'm still a resident of dissertation state, and husband was a student part of the year. Long story short our taxes were going to be more complicated than usual so instead of doing them myself (not ourselves but myself) I decided to get a professional to do them.

The nice man helping us was going to put my husband as taxpayer and me as spouse. I decided to ask him why he was doing it this way. He said, "I always put the man first." I asked why and he didn't have an answer. All he said was, "I always do it this way."I told him to change it and put me first, since really I'm the head of the household-what ever the hell that means.
What really pissed me off is that initially he put in the first two numbers of my social since my W-2 was the top form of our pile and made a conscious decision to change. If my husbands W-2 was on top and he just started that way I may not have asked the question. If he would have answered my question with, "it's best if the taxpayer is the higher income earner," I would have agreed. My husband is no longer a student and so, for the first time in our living together he is making more than me.

So I was pissy last night about how the tax forms are biased. Why aren't there spots for taxpayer X and taxpayer Y? We are both a spouse and are both a taxpayer.

In retrospect I wish I would have asked him what he does when he gets two men.

In the end he couldn't even get our dissertation state tax form figured out, since my husband was a partial resident of that state and I am a full time resident. We have to go back next week...