100% certain han and lando once got married for a scam and forgot to have it annulled so they were technically married for several years and one day lando comes in and goes âreal quick: are we solo-calrissian or calrissian-solo? also, i want a divorceâ and han is like baby no where did i go wrong we can still fix this
@unprettyâs tags are legit, as always.
#ostensibly it was for a scam but we all know the truth#they forget to get divorced until han is getting married again#do you think polyamorous marriage is legal in star wars#it has to be right#so han is accidentally married to like three people#and leia is kind of annoyed by this so he goes to lando#who doesnât understand the problem because legally speaking he is married to a city-state#he solves a lot of problems by marrying them#he also creates a lot of problems but those are for future lando#not current lando who is currently explaining that he has built a complex tax scheme on his marriages#and his marriage to han is loadbearing#do you have any idea what this would do to his tax deductions han#it would destroy them#han hasnât paid space taxes in years but it turns out heâs landoâs dependent and lando has actually been collecting a refund this whole time#han is offended and wants his refunds but lando is like no fuck you#if you did your own space taxes youâd be paying twice what iâm getting
Okay but if Han is neither living with Lando nor having <%50 of his supporting costs covered by Lando he wouldnât be a dependent? Also spouses arenât dependents, they are spouses, they get a personal exemption.
So what really would have to be happening here is that Lando is filing for them as Married Filing Jointly. And the only way for that to make sense without having any income listed for Han is if heâs claiming that Han is a stay-at-home house husband. Which is 100% more hilarious, if you ask me.
Especially because when Han and Leia get married that doesnât change? Leia is off running the New Republic, so Han is totally home with Ben. And every April Leia and Lando have an epic game a sabac to determine who gets Hanâs personal exemption that year.
those are the rules for federal tax law in america, on earth, where only human beings can be married to a single other human being at any given time
if we are assuming that in space it is possible to be polyamorously married to various forms of alien, humanoid and otherwise, with variable lifespans and definitions of intimacy, we must also assume that the rules around the tax laws created to incentivize marriage must also be different
âmarried filing jointlyâ makes very little sense for situations where you are married to three people who each have their own spouses who may not be married to you, and furthermore the tax status is only necessary if what you are trying to encourage is long-term monogamous relationships (which i donât think the empire or the republic particularly care about). and dependency rules about co-habitation do not make sense for species whose biology or culture negates the possibility of co-habitation even in closely intimate relationships (and definitely doesnât make sense if someoneâs job requires them to spend most of their time traveling through space hauling cargo, or if the government has mandated they work on another planet for some unspecified period of time)
(there is also no meaningful definition of âannuallyâ in the context of space taxes, and therefore taxation periods must be defined per-planet as lived on by the head of household)
(we must also assume that each planet has its own tax structure, and therefore what we are worried about here are republican or empirical taxes, or as they are colloquially known, âspace taxesâ, the taxes you pay to the space government as opposed to your planetary government)
in theory we could assume that the space government simply doesnât incentivize marriage, because why would they, but that doesnât work for fic purposes. therefore the most logical reason for the incentive is liability. in that case, each marriage would define one person as the head of household, and the other as a dependentâwith the head of household being the person who is legally liable for the otherâs taxes and whatnots. if a HoH also has legal access to the assets of their dependents, in order to maintain the household, this creates a set of checks and balances (as it were).
the person in a marriage defined as head of household must therefore be someone that the dependent trusts to be able to keep their shit in order, and the person defined as a dependent must be someone the head of household trusts not to totally bail on them with a bunch of federal property. whoâs who therefore becomes a personal choice between the married individuals.
if we assume this stacks, then letâs say person A is married to person B, and person B is also married to person C. if person A is HoH in the first marriage, and person B is HoH in the second marriage, person A still gets access to all the assets of person C as the dependent of their dependent. this means if your husband is thinking about marrying some fucking rando, youâre incentivized to make sure everything is on the level so you donât have some shady motherfucker with complete access to your assets, or alternately, the ability to make you legally liable for serious space crimes. this is the primary disincentive for fraudâmarrying someone who wants to commit fraud is a fast track to either getting all your shit stolen or else ending up in jail for a crime you didnât commit.
alternately, if lando is married to han, and leia is married to han, and lando and leia are both HoH, things get theoretically complicated. things can get split up according to various formulas, or one of them (leia, itâs leia) can claim more limited benefits in exchange for giving up the majority, as well as surrendering access to hanâs assets or liability for his dumb horseshit (âdonât look at me, call his husband, iâm not responsible for that dingus i just have the option to be. you think i want access to his checking account? heâs got three dollars and a pack of gum in there.â). marriage in that case is more a matter of having familial access to your spouse (hospital visitation, etc).
the majority of incentives (in the form of exemptions, credits, etc) would be for the HoHs of dependents who do work the government particularly needs done, because government contractors are the ones the government is most worried about bailing off to nowhere planet with a bunch of stuff. a liability-based system makes it possible for the space government to go to their spouse like âhey⌠your husband took off with all our shit, pay up pleaseâ. therefore having certain kinds of dependent would alter the type of HoH someone is in order to determine what benefits they receive and what liabilities they are assumed to have taken on.
thatâs the logic i used, anyway