Maybe there's something I don't understand, but per this table it's slightly worse to be married filing separately than it is to be single at the top brackets:

Maybe there's something I don't understand, but per this table it's slightly worse to be married filing separately than it is to be single at the top brackets: https://www.bankrate.com/taxes/tax-brackets/ https://www.bankrate.com/taxes/tax-brackets/ edit: changed "much" to "slightly"