Repealing the joint return would eliminate the marriage penalty for all filers
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
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Clarifies what ‘marriage neutrality’ would concretely require: repealing the joint return and overturning Poe v. Seaborn.
Related
- Individual filing would eliminate the marriage bonus and singles penalty (similarity 0.93)
- Joint-return math forces marriage-penalty cuts to reward single-earner households (similarity 0.84)
- The joint tax return rewards one-income couples and punishes dual-earner black households (similarity 0.80)
- The joint tax return harms black families disproportionately despite facial neutrality. (similarity 0.79)
- The 2017 act’s marriage-penalty relief mainly benefits the wealthiest couples (similarity 0.79)
- The joint-return bracket design creates marriage penalties for higher earners (similarity 0.79)
- The joint tax return was created to benefit single-earner white couples. (similarity 0.79)