Imagine for a moment that the state does not approve of my wish to marry my lover. Perhaps we are of the same sex, or perhaps we are distant cousins. What tangible impacts does not acquiring a certificate from some state bureaucrat have? We will go on living in the same house, loving each other and raising a family. Upon first glance, beyond mere symbolism, not being formally married has no consequences. However, the government's use of the tax code to punish unmarried individuals imparts financial consequences that are non-trivial, especially for those already struggling. The tax code currently discourages two-income households, effectively forcing partners to either forsake their jobs or divorce. The better solution is to eliminate the legal notion of marriage altogether and view all individuals as single for tax purposes.
University of California, Berkeley law professor Melissa Murray and University of California, Davis law professor Dennis Ventry find that a typical single taxpayer who earns $200,000 per year pays about a quarter of that income in federal taxes. Simply by marrying a nonworking individual, however, this taxpayer would save nearly $7,000 per year. Now imagine that this same taxpayer is married to someone who is also employed. The savings now decline to just under $1,000. While husbands could theoretically stay at home, women still do far more household work than men. Because the tax code discourages two income households, it is often women's career aspirations that suffer. In effect, the tax code punishes couples where both partners work by roughly $6,000, and it punishes those who are not married by even more.
But focusing on the relatively wealthy individuals, such as the hypothetical taxpayer earning $200,000, misses even graver consequences caused by the tax system that uniquely disadvantage the poor. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project, argues that marriage would push many low-income families just above the income thresholds for housing assistance and food aid, and it is precisely in this demographic where non-marital childrearing is on the rise along and where divorce rates are already high. Ironically, politicians on the left and right mourn the decline of family as an institution due to low-income families' divorces while simultaneously purporting that these taxes incentivize marriage and uphold its special status in society when, in fact, the broken tax system is contributing to marriage's demise.
The solution is simple: abolish the legal notion of marriage. The government has no business regulating who can and cannot be married, and the government's involvement only imposes unfair economic burdens on people who choose alternate lifestyles. From a tax point of view, the legal notion of marriage only over-complicates the already overburdened system or encourages people to give up marriage or their careers. By not discriminating between single and married individuals and viewing all persons as single, we can prevent women sidelining their careers and single people from being taxed unfairly. Instead, we can encourage people to make lifestyle choices not out of economic benefits but the happiness it gives them.
There are two traditional arguments against this position. The first is the dreaded slippery slope: without a strict, legal recognition of what constitutes marriage, we open the floodgates to bestiality and incest. The second is that we need to recognize how special marriage is and codify it in law because without this, many people would stop getting married. Getting rid of the legal notion of marriage is not equivalent with legalizing bestiality, and even if there were strong evidence of this, just because bestiality is legal does not mean people will suddenly get into bed with cows. In the same vein, people will naturally come together and form families regardless of the government's opinion, and getting rid of the legal notion of marriage is not the same as disallowing people to start families. The special legal status of marriage is entirely unnecessary to its preservation.
Let me be clear: I am a firm believer in marriage. It brings communities together, provides a solid foundation on which to raise the next generation, discourages separation and has a powerful symbolic importance. Marriage is a natural instinct and has been a part of every culture for thousands of years. The government's involvement, by contrast, is relatively new, and it actually works against the intended purpose.
