The joint tax return was created to benefit single-earner white couples.

Evidence

Black taxpayers like my parents pay more because U.S. tax policies ignore the reality of societal differences based on race. The joint tax return exists because back in 1930, a wealthy white shipbuilder named Henry Seaborn convinced the Supreme Court to impute half of his taxable income to his stay-at-home wife, Charlotte, lowering his taxes. Congress gave all Americans access to the joint return in 1948. The policy rewarded people like the Seaborns, allowing a couple who could easily get by with one income to split it down the middle to avoid being taxed at the highest rate. But that same policy punished the Browns, who were striving to save and build a better future for themselves and their children and needed every penny of their two paychecks to do so. … It is a pattern that has shaped the contour of being middle class and black, and it helps explain why black families have such a hard time maintaining middle-class status across decades and generations. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 66

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains what the marriage penalty/joint return mechanism actually is and how it emerged from the Seaborn decision.
• ADDENDUM: Directly relates to the ‘On Sacrifice’ article’s theme of structural systems benefiting one group via ostensibly neutral rules — though the more apt link is the general structural-racism framing.
• SEED: Strong essay angle: ‘How a 1930 shipbuilder’s tax dodge still taxes Black families today’ — a single origin story for a race-neutral provision with a named mechanism.