Our new Marriage Bonus and Penalty calculator, despite all its Valentine’s Day finery, ignores the new 0.9 percent Medicare payroll tax hike buried in the 2010 health law. The extra levy affects only a few high-income couples but in very different ways. Lucky couples will collect marriage bonuses of up to $450. But those less [...]

Economists and many policymakers generally agree that our tax and transfer systems should promote opportunity, work, saving, and education rather than consumption. The problem is these programs often penalize people for earning that extra dollar of income. Rather than promoting work and savings, these implicit taxes punish such otherwise positive behavior. These penalties occur in [...]

The federal income tax is not neutral when it comes to marriage. Get married and you and your spouse may pay less to Uncle Sam. Or you may pay more. It all depends. Whether you get a marriage bonus—your combined tax bill goes down—or suffer a marriage penalty—you pay more as a couple—depends on various [...]

Few people marry or divorce to change their tax status, but the federal income tax code does treat married couples and single people differently. Each group has its own tax brackets, standard deductions, credits, and phaseouts. As a result, two people can face very different tax bills if they are married and file jointly than [...]