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re: What's the point of marriage?
Posted on 6/8/16 at 9:23 pm to truthteller34
Posted on 6/8/16 at 9:23 pm to truthteller34
quote:
Sure the tax breaks are nice, but marriage has lost a lot of its initial value.
Uh... no
Just to help strengthen the OP's argument, you don't even have the incentive of tax breaks to get married.
You actually suffer a pretty large tax penalty for getting married vs just shacking up with your S.O.
And that is true whether it's a scenario with children or without.
Getting married lumps both spouses income together to throw you into a higher tax bracket in most cases vs reporting your income individually.
If you own a home and are able to itemize your deductions, that will be all you get as a married couple.
On the other hand, if you are simply living with your significant other, you can take all the deductions for mortgage interest, taxes, contributions, etc. against your income and then the S.O. can double down by taking the standard deduction on her individual return, which is an additional $6,900 in deductions.
Even better if you have a kid together as the S.O. can now file as head of household and take the child credit and daycare credit all against her income.
Just think of all the votes you wasted on evangelical republican politicians who wouldn't even lift a finger to eliminate the tax on marriage. They just wanted a share of the tithes.
3
Posted on 6/8/16 at 9:29 pm to PygmalionEffect
quote:
Just think of all the votes you wasted on evangelical republican politicians who wouldn't even lift a finger to eliminate the tax on marriage.
Take this shite to the poli board, you know to much about the tax code to be trusted..
Posted on 6/8/16 at 9:34 pm to PygmalionEffect
quote:
Even better if you have a kid together as the S.O. can now file as head of household and take the child credit and daycare credit all against her income.
On a serious note, is this how you should go about it. My fiancée and I had a baby in March, won't be married until 2017. Should she claim baby on 2016 taxes?
Posted on 6/8/16 at 10:04 pm to PygmalionEffect
quote:
On the other hand, if you are simply living with your significant other, you can take all the deductions for mortgage interest, taxes, contributions, etc. against your income and then the S.O. can double down by taking the standard deduction on her individual return, which is an additional $6,900 in deductions
Some faulty logic here, or at least not well explained. The standard deduction for married is 2x that of single, so there is no double down, and therefore would only be beneficial if your itemized were very high relative to standard deduction. The amount is also 6300 I think.
The rest of your post, and overall point is correct though. Particularly the head of household points, that's the best filing status.
The more sever penalties are usually in the other thresholds, like the new Medicare tax on high amounts of cap gains, where the married threshold is less than 2x of the single threshold.
In summary, having kids is a tax break, not getting married.
This post was edited on 6/8/16 at 10:11 pm
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