Joint-return math forces marriage-penalty cuts to reward single-earner households

Evidence

But this round of marriage-penalty relief also came at a cost—an even greater marriage bonus. Mathematically speaking, that is the only way to provide marriage-penalty relief in a joint-return, progressive tax system. In order for dual-earning black married couples (outside of the lowestand highest-income households) to not pay higher taxes when they get married, their white single-wage-earner “equal income” household peers would now pay even less. But remember, when it comes to income, two does not equal one. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 130

Categorization

• XREF: Mechanistic exposition of how a facially neutral joint-return system embeds disadvantage — parallels the reader’s interest in how IRS data gaps are worked around (chapter’s architecture).