NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #16/NN_1992_16.iso/spool/misc/consumer/14375

Internet Message Format | 1992-07-23 | 1.8 KB

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From: [e-mail] (James Preston)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers
Subject: Re: Married/Single/Taxes
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Jul 92 17:51:25 GMT
References: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail]
Organization: Amdahl Corporation, Sunnyvale CA
Lines: 25


}I would be VERY happy if someone would disprove the contention that married
}couples are worse off tax-wise than singles, but that's how I read it.
}(Actually, I just skimmed over the tax tables/forms this year, since
}we decided to hire a professional to prepare the forms for us. We did
}seem to get hit rather badly, tax-wise, in our first year of marriage :-(  )

You don't have to cull graphs and equations from the tax tables to know
that there is sometimes a marriage tax, you just have to get married and
compare your situation before and after (or use a tax program to do the
"what if" using the exact same numbers).

You need to remember that the tax tables were designed with the assumption
that a married couple would have one income.  If I make a hundred thousand
a year, and then I marry a woman who doesn't work, my taxes will indeed be
lower when that hundred thousand is filed as a married income rather than as
a single income (this can easily be seen by looking at any line on the tax
table; for any given income, the single tax is higher than the married tax).

But if instead my wife works and we each make fifty thousand a year, then the
tax on our combined one hundred thousand filed as a married income will be
substantially higher than the combined tax on our individual fifty thousand
incomes filed singly.

--James Preston