Before I started studying singlism, I thought I knew what the "marriage penalty" was: On the same taxable income, married people pay more taxes than single people do. What I wondered was just how much more the married couples paid. So I used the handy tax calculator at the Money Chimp website to see. (Here, I'll use the most recent tax figures, for 2008, so they will differ from the numbers on p. 227 of Singled Out.)

What if I had a taxable income of $50,000 and a married couple filing jointly had the same $50,000 of taxable income? I'd pay $8,844. How much more would the married couple pay? Their tax bill would be $6,698. Hey, that's less! $2,146 less!

Labels: Marriage, tax policy

VOTE

<< Home