Marriage peanlty tax

Justin Schwartz jschwart at freenet.columbus.oh.us
Thu May 28 05:07:21 PDT 1998


On Wed, 27 May 1998, Anderson, Bob wrote:


> The folks who promote term limits are also attacking the marriage penatly
> tax, which makes me suspicious of their criticism of the tax. Can anyone
> help me understand the marriage penalty tax issue?

I didn't take tax in law school, so I have particular expertise. But my understanding of the notion is this. As you know, married couples pay more taxes if they file jointly. I am 2000% certain this has never deterred anyone from getting married, but never mind that. The cultural right thinks that this is a secular humanist plot to undermine the scarement of marriage. The anti-gummint, anti-tax right have now seized on the marriage penalty to come up with another tax cut, removing the marriage pena;ty by getting rid of the extra taxes and extra revenues for the US rather than increasing taxes for the unmarried or married-filing-seperately. This way, both the cultural and the economic right are happy, and only the US has to worry about where to get, I believe $25 billion.

--jks



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