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Get rid of marriage from the tax code entirely. If you both make near-equal income, there's not a marriage benefit, but a marriage penalty. My wife and I pay $5
by jquery 14y ago
Get rid of marriage from the tax code entirely. If you both make near-equal income, there's not a marriage benefit, but a marriage penalty. My wife and I pay $5-10k more a year in taxes because we decided to get married. The tax-code still encourages the old paradigm of one breadwinner and one person staying home to take care of the children.
- rogerbinns 14y agoYou do get some choice in how to file. I'd much rather the tax code applied equally to everyone - single, married, children or childless. The goal should be for the tax return to be less than a page long and so dead simple that billions of dollars are not spent each year just on filling them out.
- notdrunkatall 14y agoAgreed. The government should not be in the business of social engineering to increase tax revenues. That aspect of governance should be entirely reactive, not proactive. The government should be a subservient entity, not a manipulative one.
- majormajor 14y agoEh, overall I think tax-related stuff is the "least bad" way for the government to influence behavior, compared to criminalization and the use of force. (The assumption here being that a government with no way of exerting control over its populations behavior is impractical, though I know some disagree with that premise.) (Referring to the idea of using taxes to influence behavior in general rather than the specific; in this case, I'm having trouble coming up with any realistic (for the modern UN) way more heavy-handed approaches could be applied.)
- tomjen3 14y agoGovernment should not be in the business of influencing behaviour at all, except for preventing direct harm by one person to another. Any thing else is just nanny state visit bullshit
- tomjen3 14y agoGovernment should not be in the business of influencing behaviour at all, except for preventing direct harm by one person to another. Any thing else is just nanny state visit bullshit
- csense 14y agoI've heard of a proposal to replace income taxes with consumption taxes. This way, the government wouldn't have an excuse to poke its nose into every citizen's private finances. Unless you're running a business, paying your taxes is dead simple: When you buy stuff, pay the price that comes up on the register. Of course, it punishes people who save money, because anyone with savings at the time the law changes would be taxed twice: the (pre-change) income tax they paid earning the money, and the (post-change) consumption tax they paid spending the money. You'd think it'd be political suicide to propose something like this (and, indeed, despite the IRS's regularly topping the list of most-loathed government agencies, the consumption-tax proposal has remained well on the fringe). But consider: The US government's inflationary fiscal and monetary policies punish savers, too, and they get away with it. Clearly, living within one's means is only for losers.
- yummyfajitas 14y agoFun fact: the poor consume more than they produce, while the rich produce more than they consume. Thus, a consumption tax would hit the poor the hardest (proportionate to income), and are thus unpopular. Don't get me wrong - I personally favor them. Consumption taxes hit people in proportion to the benefit they receive from society. But they are a political non-starter for this reason.
- rdl 14y agoI think consumption taxes combined with a basic income/negative income tax (to replace other government assistance) are more politically viable than strictly consumption taxes on the first dollar alone. But then you have the "they're taking away your food stamps! your social security! and new taxes" etc., even though you're giving them net more money.
- nwomack 14y ago1) I don't believe this is possible on a joint return 2) If indeed it is possible, what's stopping you from filing as "married filing separately"?
- jcampbell1 14y ago1) It is possible. A quick look at the tax code would show the 33% bracket starts at 178k for individuals, and $217k for couples. 178*2 > 217. 2) Married filing separately is not even remotely the same as filing as a single.
- martingordon 14y agoThere are different different brackets for single vs married (http://www.mydollarplan.com/tax-brackets/ http://www.mydollarplan.com/tax-brackets/). Filing separately uses the joint brackets divided by two. If two people each make $500k (nowhere close to the average/median, but it illustrates the point). They would pay the 39.6% rate on anything over $400k if single, or 2 * 100k * .396 = $79.2k. If married filing jointly, they would pay 39.6% on anything over $450k, or 550k * .396 = $217.8k. If filing separately, they would pay the same $217.8k (2 * 275k * 39.6%). Even looking at something like each making $150k, the marginal tax rate for singles is 28% and the rate for a married couple is 33%.
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- montecarl 14y agoGet rid of marriage from the law entirely. Marriage could be expressed in a standard contract that gives the sorts of rights the it currently carries. The state shouldn't have any say in who enters this sort of agreement.
- pixie_ 14y agoMarriage wasn't even in law until the late 1800's when they had to define it to outlaw polygamous Mormons.
- millstone 14y agoWhat do you mean? Marriage licenses were issued in the American colonies, so state marriage licenses are in that sense older than the USA.
- seldo 14y agoThis was Mitt Romney's suggestion for gay marriage, but the truth is that there are all sorts of rights that can only be conferred by marriage. For example: you can't write a contract that says your business partner should pay less taxes, but marriage can. You can't write a contract that gives your business partner the right to a green card, but marriage can. There's literally hundreds more. We are a species that likes to pair-bond; we consider it a greater hardship to separate members of a pair than members of a looser association like friendship. The legislation reflects that. Social engineering via tax breaks are a dumb idea, but deleting the concept of marriage from law entirely is impractical and probably undesirable.
- waqf 14y agoI am torn, because I want to upvote your first para which accurately addresses the points raised by the parent; yet your second para is all fluff, empty rhetoric, assertions totally without justification. If you are a new kind of troll, I salute you.
- hayksaakian 14y ago
- kqr2 14y agoHow does the tax code work in other countries? Is US unique in its treatment of marriage versus singles?
- artsrc 14y agoIn Australia married couples file their own tax separately. One income supports 5 people in my case, but I am taxed the same way as if that income supported one person. No system is perfect. The US system much better recognizes capacity to contribute taxation.
- vvhn 14y agoas is the case in india - everybody files taxes individually (and not as a family unit). Having moved to the US recently, it was quite a surprise to me that I was paying more in taxes per year than if I my wife and I were filing taxes individually as single people.
- crazygringo 14y agoIt's not that simple, for any tax code which is progressive (i.e. where someone making $200K pays a greater percentage in taxes than someone making $20K). Because it you're single, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your own income. But if you're married, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your combined income -- so it doesn't matter if you make $180K and your spouse $20K, or you both make $100K. In a marriage, you want to be able to "trade around" resources like that, instead of one partner being classified as "living in poverty" and the other considered well-off. So if you want a tax code that seems progressively "fair", you're pretty much forced to take marriage into account.
- ak217 14y ago> [If] you're single, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your own income. But if you're married, it makes sense for your tax rate to be based on your combined income -- so it doesn't matter if you make $180K and your spouse $20K, or you both make $100K. In a marriage, you want to be able to "trade around" resources like that, instead of one partner being classified as "living in poverty" and the other considered well-off. Why?
- fennecfoxen 14y agoYou know, you have a good point. Now what about this family's children? Perhaps they will qualify for half of Medicaid and half of a food stamps subscription while they're attending their $30,000/yr preschool.
- jquery 14y agoOr you could treat them exactly the same as children of single parents are treated. In other words, count them as beneficiaries of the income of both parents. No reason we need a marriage penalty to prevent to stop your scenario from happening.
- philwelch 14y agoBecause it's cheating the system if people can collect public assistance while simultaneously being supported by their spouse.
- dennisgorelik 14y agoTax code encourages having kids. If family has kids, then it's unlikely that spouses would have about the same income.