Sometimes, married couples find that they pay higher taxes after marriage than they would have had to pay if they remained single. This is especially true for two-earner couples where each spouse earns similar amounts of income. By contrast, some couples pay less in tax after marriage. As a general rule, couples get a marriage bonus when one spouse earns 70 percent or more of the couple's income.
Marriage penalties are attributable to a variety of factors.
When a couple's earnings are combined, they frequently end up in a higher tax bracket than they would have been in as single taxpayers. There are other factors. For example, the standard deduction for a married couple is less than twice the amount allowed for two single taxpayers. We need to figure out a way to solve the problem of the marriage penalty. This is not as easy as it sounds.