[HN Gopher] The bachelor tax - what it costs in taxes to be single
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The bachelor tax - what it costs in taxes to be single
Author : wkaisertexas
Score : 26 points
Date : 2026-01-27 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bachelor-tax.vercel.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (bachelor-tax.vercel.app)
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| A Federal Tax calculator I made after finding out my tax savings
| would be $12k if I married my girlfriend.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Depending on circumstances, you might save considerably more in
| other areas - being covered as a spouse on the other's employer
| health insurance, reduced car insurance rates, state & local
| tax savings, ...
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| 12k in savings included about 6k in state tax savings because
| I am in California. Will add in state taxes if people end up
| using this
| toast0 wrote:
| If you stay married for at least ten years, and one spouse has
| a significantly better social security record, the other spouse
| can claim spousal benefits if your marriage is still in force
| or they are unmarried.
|
| Hard to value that though.
| cratermoon wrote:
| It's about to get even worse:
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/birth-rate-trump-baby-bonus-1....
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| What's going to get worse? Currently parents get absolutely
| shafted by the tax system as the tax credits are next to
| nothing relative to the amount of time, effort, and capital it
| takes to raise a child.
|
| Currently the cost of raising children is privatized while the
| benefits are socialized.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I wonder how many more failed tiny financial band-aids it will
| take before governments figure out that moving the needle on
| birth rate requires that deep systemic issues be addressed.
|
| The most astute observation I've seen on the topic is that in a
| capitalistic system in which monetary value is assigned to
| everything, the value of children is deeply negative and
| therefore they are not desirable. By having children, most
| couples are putting their stability, wellbeing, and long-term
| prospects on the line. The opportunity cost is staggering. If
| more children is the desired outcome, _that tradeoff must cease
| to exist_ , and a lousy $2k isn't anything remotely close to
| that.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Get rid of old age benefits and the value will become
| positive.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| That would introduce a new problem of all of those seniors
| suddenly becoming more dependent on their younger family
| members, which is exacerbated by kids moving all over the
| country in search of greener pastures.
|
| There's not really a solution that doesn't involve heavy
| restructuring in one place or another.
| ashishb wrote:
| Very few people understand the depth of what you just said.
|
| $2K or even $20K is meaningless for a parent making $100K or
| more.
|
| Kids have a negative value to a professional class member.
|
| If you engage in agriculture or some similar activity, a
| child as old as 10 can be a helping hand in some way or the
| other. No surprises that Amish farmers have a high birth
| rate.
|
| https://ashishb.net/parenting/pregnancy/
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| It's not clear exactly what the number is, but if one
| observes individuals who manage to climb out of the low and
| middle classes and accrue a certain amount of wealth
| (somewhere in the ballpark of $600k-$1m net worth and up,
| maybe), pretty consistently not long after that achievement
| they've settled down and started a family.
|
| I think for many the desire is there, but sufficient de-
| risking is required for them to be comfortable with acting
| upon it.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I think there's just not enough money in the county to
| induce more babies. The cost would be a shock. Anyone
| wealthy enough to shoulder the cost would fight so hard
| against it, it would never stand a chance. IMO the number
| is probably something like $10k per year per kid. Foster
| Care pays somewhere between 8k-12k.
| rpdillon wrote:
| This is such an important point. As a father of two, children
| are turning out to be a very large investment...larger than
| anything else I ever will pour money into, probably by an
| order of magnitude (though not quite, since I have a house).
|
| I talk to lots of people in SV, heads of design, engineers,
| as well as folks from around the world that I work with, from
| San Diego to Argentina and Chile. So many 20-30 year-olds
| have told me they are never having kids. Life is too fun, and
| they want to see the world. But training the next generation
| is hard work, and it's easy to do a terrible job. We _want_
| to incentivize people to have kids and be great parents. But
| that requires voluntary sacrifice, which is a hard sell.
|
| If I hadn't had kids, I could retire now. As it is, I'll be
| lucky to be able to work and get a job so I can earn for the
| next couple of decades so I have enough to retire.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Seems about as likely to materialize as every other handout
| this administration has promised.
|
| How's everyone enjoying their tariff rebate checks? Any
| servicemembers care to share how they spent their warrior
| dividend?
| coccinelle wrote:
| It can be also a married person tax depending on your
| circumstances. If both spouses make similar amounts then they are
| getting taxed more as a married couple, because the bracket
| threshold for a married couple are less than 2x that for an
| individual. I don't understand why everyone is not taxed as an
| individual, regardless of marital status.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Taxing as individuals is kind of unfair to single earner
| households, since the earner has to support more people it
| seems reasonable to tax them less. You could maybe accomplish a
| similar thing with deductions but there will still be some
| weird cases
| toast0 wrote:
| As a mostly single earner in a community property state, my
| spouse earns half the income for tax purposes. If you were
| going to tax individuals, it's probably reasonable to apply
| income evenly across marriages for all states.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I supported a non-earning spouse for a decade in Canada and
| it's always been a bit murky. Like in 2014-2015 there was a
| concept of transferring up to 50k of income to the spouse
| ("Family Tax Cut"), but Trudeau's Liberal gov't canceled it
| when they came into power; I think they correctly
| recognized that it was basically a handout to families
| privileged enough to be in a position where there was
| enough spread between the two earners that transferring
| that sum would be significant.
|
| CRA is even pretty careful about letting a spouse claim
| capital gains income; it's always attributed back to
| whoever earned the original principal (outside of
| inheritance). I think the only way around this is to
| formally "loan" the spouse their investment money, but you
| have to charge them interest and the interest is of course
| income to you.
| graemep wrote:
| We have exactly this problem in the UK.
|
| A couple each home earns x, each gets taxed on x. Each gets
| the tax free allowance on the fist PS12.5k of the annual
| income. Each gets the full basic rate slice before they hit
| higher bands etc.
|
| If one of the couple earns 2x and the other zero, then only
| one can use their tax free allowance and they get one slice
| of the basic rate band etc.
|
| They still have the same pre-tax income for the same
| household.
|
| Personally I think people should be allowed to opt in to
| sharing taxable income.
| jamespo wrote:
| This discourages people joining the workforce and is open
| to fraud. You will then get the argument of "why should I
| be taxed more because I'm single"?
| graemep wrote:
| Why do we need to push people into the workforce? There
| are a lot of social benefits to people being stay at home
| parents (which will be the commonest reason for doing
| so).
|
| What fraud?
|
| > You will then get the argument of "why should I be
| taxed more because I'm single"?
|
| You might, but its a dishonest argument. You are taxing
| households together. You are giving each individual the
| same amount of tax free income and the same amount in the
| lower bands.
|
| It is already possible for self employed people to do
| this by making their spouses a partner or shareholder in
| the business or similar. This is just extending the same
| rights to employed people.
| jamespo wrote:
| Why is taxing households together the correct thing,
| other than the fact it presumably would improve your
| personal standard of living (it would also improve mine)?
| What are you trying to encourage? I could see if you want
| to encourage families having tax benefits based on
| children - but universal childcare provision seems more
| likely to succeed.
|
| And as for not seeing how a tax cut based on 2 people
| living together could not be abused, you must be very
| short sighted.
| pavon wrote:
| TIL. All the tax bracket thresholds for married filing jointly
| are exactly double that of married filing separately, which are
| the same as single taxpayer, _except_ the threshold for top-
| most bracket where it switches between 35% and 37%, which is
| wildly different in favor of single taxpayers. Weird.
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| What is very strange is that some states let you file jointly
| to save money on federal income taxes, but file separately for
| state income taxes and others do not.
|
| Taxation is a strange, mixed-up world.
| antonymoose wrote:
| I just checked the Federal rates and they're pretty much
| exactly double from single to married.
|
| Are you in a funky state with bad tax policy?
| LanceH wrote:
| The threshold rates for a lot of credits, deductions and
| exemptions are not. Like the Roth IRA is $153k for single,
| $242k for married. Child care credits have a similar problem
| if I remember correctly (or they did before my kids grew out
| of it).
| soupfordummies wrote:
| I did a draft of our taxes this week and it was almost
| exactly the same amount filing married vs separately. Where
| is the big benefit for filing jointly? I guess if you claim
| dependents?
| antonymoose wrote:
| If one spouse makes significant income and the other does
| not, it can help drop the high-earner into a lower bracket
| overall. Not a huge boon, but every penny counts in our
| household.
| dmoy wrote:
| MFS vs MFJ is a whole different thing from MFJ vs 2x
| Single.
|
| While there's numerous places where MFJ < 2x Single due to
| various marriage penalties, and even more numerous places
| where 2x Single < MFJ due to the shared tax bracket space
| below the 37% bracket....
|
| there are very very few places where MFS > MFJ. They exist,
| but you have to be in particular situations like one person
| having disproportionately more debt and on an income based
| repayment plan, or similar.
|
| There are of course many situations where 2x Single = MFJ =
| MFS if it's just two similar income W2 employees with no
| edge cases going on.
|
| (Once you're married, filing 2x Single is obviously not an
| option)
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| A married couple pays the same income tax as two single
| payers making half the income.
|
| Due to progressive taxation, we tax two people who make
| $50,000 less than someone who makes $100,000 which is where
| the tax savings come from.
| mahirsaid wrote:
| if its not more evident that taxes are to benefit whatever it
| is and not what's important. The complex rules that are based
| on 0 logic.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Tax policy is also used a method of encourage certain types of
| behavior and discourage others. EV Tax Credits and Solar Tax
| Credits are example of encouraging starting up industries which
| we need to assist with climate change in economic powered
| method.
|
| At a broad level, offering benefits for marriage solves
| political problem, married people tend to vote so need to be
| catered to. It also solves societal one, marriage tends to be
| better at extremely broad strokes for society. Married Couples
| live longer, commit less crime, kids in married households
| generally have better outcomes and so forth. So politicians in
| United States decided to incentive it.
| knallfrosch wrote:
| > I don't understand why everyone is not taxed as an
| individual, regardless of marital status.
|
| Because married couples form a household and it allows them to
| share child care and work as they see fit.
|
| If you tax individuals, you're encouraging both to earn the
| same amount of money.
|
| If you tax couples, it encourages the higher earner to keep
| working, thus you have a higher overall productivity.
|
| Thus you have freedom and higher overall productivity in favor
| of shared tax burden.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| If you have to pay NIIT it's fairly disadvantageous to be
| married.
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| If NIIT significantly outweighs the increase in your standard
| deduction, you probably already have a tax professional for
| questions.
| stego-tech wrote:
| I appreciate this, but now do one for non-traditional, multi-
| income households.
|
| I'd like solid numbers of how much I'm overpaying to do the work
| the government refuses to (sheltering folks, ensuring nutritious
| foodstuffs).
| alphazard wrote:
| Okay now factor in the probability of divorce, and the amount you
| get to keep afterwards, and discount it to present value, vs.
| paying more taxes and keeping it all. Also remember that you
| typically lose half of income forever, not just wealth in a
| divorce.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| It is important to understand the consequences of breaking any
| contract you enter into, including marriage. Luckily, you're
| not stuck with default terms to that contract, and if you're
| not comfortable with them pre-nuptual agreements can modify
| those terms.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Not sure why this is being downvoted. It should be a very real
| consideration at least in the US.
| silexia wrote:
| The best thing I have done in my life was get married and have
| kids. And money has nothing to do with that happiness.
| mgaunard wrote:
| Tax works differently by country. In many cases there are no
| mechanism to pool your taxes with your significant other.
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| Yep! This post was specific to US federal taxes.
|
| If people find this interesting, I will open-source and allow
| contributions to support other country's tax systems.
| smeej wrote:
| I don't get it. I keep getting $0. Maybe I'm not using high
| enough numbers? I used the example of $100k each, or then $100k
| and $80k, which is on the high side of the median where I live
| and the single vs. married end up the same.
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| You are in the same tax bracket at $80 and $100k, so the amount
| that you would pay would be identical.
|
| Switching tax brackets is a categorical change which needs to
| occur before there is a difference.
| stackskipton wrote:
| Marriage benefit comes into play when couples have disparity in
| income. If you are both at similar incomes, it won't change
| much. However, punch in 200k and 50k and see the difference.
| fragmede wrote:
| Zero comments on this linking to diamond rings? Plug in $100,000
| and $0, and it suggests some specific diamond rings of roughly
| that price. I _hope_ that an affiliate link!
| wkaisertexas wrote:
| Those are _not_ affiliate links.
|
| I just found the idea of the ring being paid for by the IRS
| funny.
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