wjm@lcuxc.UUCP (B. Mitchell) (02/14/85)
The problems with the "marriage penalty" (regardless of whether you're married or single - you may (depending on the distribution of income between the partners) pay more by changing marital status) can be solved (together with many other tax related problems) by going to a simplified flat tax structure. If you pay the government x% of all income, it makes no difference whether 2 persons of opposite sex file separately or jointly, they will pay the same total tax on their total income. As for "fairness", it seems to me that giving the government a constant percentage of income, without a large number of execptions, is the fairest approach to taxes. It may be socially desirable to exempt the first y dollars (or whatever your currency is) from taxation, but that is the only execption that is reasonable for a flat tax. <Obviously, net.taxes is not the place to discuss the pro/con of the present idea of increasing tax rates with income - net.politics seems more appropriate, I mention this here since the "marriage penalty" is one argument for a flat tax> Regards, Bill Mitchell (ihnp4!lcuxc!wjm)