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> [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 yo
by 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.
- roel_v 14y agoThat's social security, different from taxation. There is no fundamental reason the numbers used to calculate owed taxes from should be the same ones used whether one gets food stamps (this reply counts for both replies to the GP, no need in me making the point twice :) )
- rdl 14y agoYeah, there are some weird incentives if married. If one spouse makes $1mm/yr, it makes less sense for his wife who makes $0 to earn any marginal income than it would for a single woman to do so, since the first $0-10k of her own income will be taxed at a very high (~55% in California) marginal rate. This has real consequences when people divorce -- since it's so disincented for one partner to work while married, professional skills are likely to have atrophied. There are also social/psychological/etc. issues why more equal incomes make more sense.
- philwelch 14y agoIt's not net disincented, half of a professional salary is nice walking around money if you already have living expenses covered.
- philwelch 14y agoI guess that's a valid point. Though it would be an issue if there were a negative income tax.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ak217 14y agoWhy?? What's special about their spouse giving them money, vs. being supported by any random person?
- philwelch 14y agoThe fact that you refer to it as "giving them money" indicates you have a very poor grasp on the concept of marriage. A family generally lives together, pools their income, and pays for most things together anyway. There aren't usually many outright transfers. To answer your question, living off the support of "random people" is not very comfortable or lucrative. You might see people around who try to do that. We call them homeless people. They don't usually pull in enough to worry about.
- RHSeeger 14y agoThe tax rate could easily be based on the average of the salaries of the (adult) individuals of the household. If you have one person making 100k supporting one person, why not pay the same rate as two people making 200k to support two people. Instead, those two people currently pay the same rate as one person making 200k to support one person (more, technically, since it also moves them above the limits where they lose many writeoffs).