Marriage Penalty

Don't shoot the messenger. Whenever I point out some of the penalties built into our tax system for married couples, I receive a lot of hate mail claiming that I am encouraging people to get divorced just to save on their taxes. That's not true. I merely point out the facts and let each couple decide for themselves how much extra they are willing to pay for the privilege of being married.

Here are some more of the tax breaks for unmarried couples. If you agree with me that it is insane to penalize people for being married, let your elected rulers know and don't accept that "we can't afford to fix it" crap from them as an excuse. If they can afford to give themselves raises and take all of their friends on expensive junkets around the world, they can surely afford to let married people pay the same taxes as single folks.

There is a misconception that the current Bush tax proposals will eliminate the marriage penalty. Not even close. It will allow a small deduction for married couples who both have employment income, similar to the miniscule one we had for a few years. It does very little to balance things out. The only true elimination of the marriage penalty would be to allow people to have their taxes computed in the same way as single people.

KMK
- posted by Kerry M. Kerstetter, MBA~CPA~ATP~ATA @ 1/24/2003 10:04:00 PM Send this post: