Individual filing would eliminate the marriage bonus and singles penalty

Evidence

Marriage neutrality would require repealing the joint return provision and legislatively overturning Poe v. Seaborn. Now James and Dottie’s individual taxes don’t change when they marry, and neither do Charlotte and Henry’s. If Henry pays more, it’s because he’s in a higher income bracket; his stay-at-home spouse has no taxable income and would not have to file a tax return. The single wage earners would be taxed on their income the way they were before they got married. The coequal wage earners would be taxed the same way they were when they were single—and they would pay less in taxes than their single-wage-earner counterparts. There would be no singles’ penalty. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 160

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines marriage neutrality as a concrete alternative tax architecture: no joint return, no bonus or penalty.
• XREF: connects to: A record share of American adults are single and penalized by joint filing — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 163