The 2017 tax act kept the marriage penalty for low-income EITC filers.

Evidence

Treasury Department research had predicted that in 2016, a bare majority (51 percent) of married couples would receive a marriage bonus while 40 percent would pay a marriage penalty. And it should come as no surprise that as more white married couples were subject to the marriage penalty, tax relief was right around the corner. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act kept the marriage penalty for low-income taxpayers eligible for the EITC but temporarily eliminated it for almost all other households except those in the highest marginal tax bracket, 37 percent, which applies to very-high-income households (at least 500,000 for single taxpayers and 600,000 for married taxpayers). — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 129

Categorization

• XREF: Another concrete provision with named mechanism: 2017 TCJA marriage penalty removal carved out EITC earners and top-bracket households. Feeds the reader’s four-provision list.
• SEED: EITC marriage penalty plus Healthy Marriage Initiative policy contradiction could be an article on how welfare-to-marriage messaging diverges from actual tax treatment.