37% of married couples pay more in taxes than they would as singles — and the worst hit earn just $75,000 Two years ago, a friend told Erin Antler she wasn’t planning to legally marry.
The reason was taxes
Antler laughed it off — until she got married herself. She realized on their first joint return after the wedding that her husband would pay several thousand dollars more to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) each year than they did as two single people. Must Read “What bothers me is paying more simply because I got married,” she wrote in The Washington Post (1).
There’s a name for that extra bill. It’s called “the marriage penalty,” and it hits roughly 37% of married couples (2) every year for as long as they stay married. Antler is exactly the kind of couple the code catches: She works in tech law, and her husband builds software.