Marriage-penalty relief excluded the working poor who needed it most

Evidence

This reform came with a large caveat, however. The new law did not apply to taxpayers eligible for the earned income tax credit (EITC), which applies to low-income wage earners. (A tax credit is different from a deduction because it offsets tax liability rather than lowering taxable income.) Bush only slightly reduced the marriage penalty found in the EITC, which meant that those who needed it the most—hardworking, low-income Americans—got very little tax relief from being married. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 127

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines tax credit vs. deduction — a key distinction for the reader’s four-provision explanation.