Highlights
- In determining what should or should not be included in the Build Back Better plan, those in charge of the process should have a version of the Hippocratic oath in mind—“First, do no harm.” Post This
- Not only do marriage penalties leave families economically worse off, they also undermine marriage, an essential institution in a functioning society. Post This
As negotiations over the trillion-dollar-plus reconciliation package enter their final stages, Congress still has much to agree on what sort of investments to make in child tax credits, child care subsidies, universal prekindergarten and other forms of social spending.
But in determining what should or should not be included in the Build Back Better plan, those in charge of the process should have a version of the Hippocratic oath in mind—“First, do no harm.” Unfortunately, the deal proposed on Thursday by the Biden administration would do real harm to low-income couples, penalizing them for getting married relative to staying single or cohabiting.
Marriage penalties are endemic in our tax code and social welfare programs, meaning that low-income or working-class married couples receive fewer benefits than a similar-situated couple who choose not to marry. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s proposed reconciliation package would alter the earned income tax credit to add substantial penalties to tying the knot for working-class couples.
Thirty-five senators have signed onto a letter written by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, calling on the congressional leadership to undo some of the damage in the making. As they point out, an unmarried couple making a combined income of $42,000 in 2019 would see their tax bill rise by more than $1,500 if they chose to get married. Under the proposal being put forth in the reconciliation package, the amount of money that couple would pay would nearly double, to $2,700.
“Unfortunately, despite its original rollout as part of the ‘American Families Plan,’” Romney and his colleagues note, “the current draft of the reconciliation bill takes an existing marriage penalty in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and makes it significantly worse.”
This is not a new problem. One of us co-authored a report for the Administration for Children and Families that found our safety-net programs are riddled with marriage penalties, which can range into the tens of thousands of dollars. . .
Continue reading at USA Today . . .
