Federal tax marriage penalty "alive and well"

According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, by way of the Smart Marriages listserv.

> Among those stung by the marriage penalty are couples in which each spouse
> earns roughly the same and who itemize their deductions. In certain cases, the
> penalty can be so large that accountants urge some clients planning to get
> married to consider delaying the ceremony until the following year.

For the full article see the continuation.

MARRIAGE PENALTY TAX

Marriage penalty to tax more couples
By TOM HERMAN
The Wall Street Journal
April 15, 2007

The marriage penalty is far from disappearing despite efforts in Congress to
ease the problem.

Many two-income married couples still are paying more in taxes together than
they would if each had remained single. According to accountants and
congressional staffers, the so-called marriage penalty will ensnare many
more couples this year unless Congress slows the rapid growth of the
alternative minimum tax.

"The marriage penalty is alive and well - and thriving in the AMT," says
John Buckley, chief tax counsel for the Democrats on the House Ways and
Means Committee.

That may surprise some people who thought the marriage penalty was a thing
of the past. After all, Congress did make the standard deduction for joint
filers twice the amount of the standard deduction for singles. It also made
the income ranges subject to the 10 percent and 15 percent tax rates for
joint filers twice those for singles. But while those moves certainly
helped, they didn't eradicate the problem.

Lawmakers have "eliminated the marriage penalty for many married couples and
mitigated it for others - but have not done away with it entirely," says
Roberton Williams, principal research associate at the Tax Policy Center, a
joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution.

The marriage penalty is threatening to stage a major comeback because of the
AMT, which is a separate system for calculating your taxes. The AMT's
origins date back to the late 1960s, when Congress learned that a small
number of upper-income people had managed to avoid paying any federal income
tax through deductions, credits and other items. But Congress hasn't indexed
the AMT for inflation, and it has been hitting growing numbers of people
over the past few years.

Last year, Congress approved a stopgap measure, which expired at the end of
2006. If Congress does nothing, about 25 million people will fall into the
AMT's web for 2007, up sharply from about 4 million for 2006, according to
the Treasury Department's latest estimates.

Among those stung by the marriage penalty are couples in which each spouse
earns roughly the same and who itemize their deductions. In certain cases,
the penalty can be so large that accountants urge some clients planning to
get married to consider delaying the ceremony until the following year. That
allows each taxpayer to file as single for another year - and use the tax
savings to pay for an expensive honeymoon.