Salient to Investors:
The tax code option for married couples joint filing is both a social and economic anachronism. Anne L. Alstott at Yale Law School said joint filing is really outdated and does not reflect the new normal.
Edward McCaffery at Gould School of Law said in a nutshell, the bias of the tax system is against two worker marriages with children, less about marriage penalties and marriage bonuses and more about a bias against secondary earners.
45 percent of US households are headed up by unmarried men and women. Nearly 70 percent of all married women worked in 2009 versus 40 percent in 1970, and almost 62 percent of mothers with children under the age of 6 worked in 2009 versus 30 percent in 1970.
Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn at Cornell said in 1990 the US women’s labor force participation rate was 74 percent, 6th in the world, and in 2010 was 75 percent, 22nd in the world, due to the expansion in family friendly policies overseas, compared to the US.
Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations” had four maxims with regard to taxes in general: equality, certainty, convenience, and economy.
Read the full article at http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-16/why-joint-filing-is-a-dinosaur
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