It’s tax day. And to celebrate (is celebrate the right word?) the New York Times came out with a fascinating interactive graphic about the so-called marriage penalty or marriage bonus. In short, in the United States, we’ve built a tax system that rewards marriage… if one person earns the bulk of the income, while the other person stays home. This goes double once you have kids. The New York Times outlines it this way:
The largest marriage penalties fall on couples on either end of the income spectrum — poor or affluent — as well as on couples in which the two people are making similar amounts of money. … In marriages without children, the largest bonuses, in percentage terms, occur when couples have income just under $100,000 and only one earner. These couples pay about 7 percent of their income, or $7,000, less in taxes than they would if they were forced to file as two single individuals.
And worse:
The largest marriage penalties are for those who earn around $17,000, split evenly. These couples pay about 4 percent of their income, or $700, more in taxes than they would if they were allowed to file as two single individuals.
While this chart is fascinating (and at least in our case, painful), it makes me think about my perspective on taxes, and what we reward (and don’t).
Though it’s generally used as a political slur, I jokingly call myself a “tax and spend liberal.” Because yup, I believe in paying taxes so that we all have things like good public schools, and roads, and a social safety net. I remind myself of this monthly, since as a small business owner I pay gaspingly large tax bills on the regular. I also generally feel that the packages of rights that have been allowed to me as a married person are worth paying for, at least given that I can afford to pay for them. (With my Facebook feed filled with joyful notes from long married LGBTQ friends who are finally being allowed to pay a marriage penalty, I have been spending some time pondering both injustice and gratitude.)
But when it comes to the fact that the tax code is, effectively, penalizing me for being a co-equal earner to my spouse? And then penalizes me further for being a co-equal earner, who’s also a working mother? Well, that’s the part where I start to see red. Or green, really, given what that particular choice costs us.
Which made me want to open the floor to all of you. How fascinating (and/ or painful) is this graphic? How do you feel about how our tax code approaches marriage, breadwinning, and parenting?
