Multiple neutral tax rules compound to force Black workers’ dollars to stretch further.

Evidence

Add this to the fact that black workers are less likely to get a marriage-based tax cut and more likely to pay the singles’ penalty, and that if they’ve sold a home the chances are higher that they sold it at a nondeductible loss. Then add in the fact that they may have high student loan debt and may be unable to deduct all of their interest. Black workers simply have to make their dollars go further than their white peers do. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 394

Categorization

• SEED: A concise inventory of the compounding mechanisms — marriage penalty, nondeductible home-sale loss, student-loan interest cap — useful spine for the reader’s named-provisions essay/explanatory piece.