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Monday, October 16, 2006
Marriage and taxes: Unsettling trends
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two numbers are disturbing. One is the New York Times report this weekend that married couples are now a minority of households. The U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2005 finds that 49.7 percent of the nation’s 111.1 million households are marrieds. That’s down from 52 percent five years ago. Another 5 percent are men and women who live together without marrying. That’s one disturbing number.
The other, which represents both good and bad news, comes from the Tax Foundation. The good news is that as a result of tax cuts in 2001 that created a new 10 percent income tax bracket and in 2003 that doubled the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000 per child, the percentage of filers who are removed from the rolls has gone from 22.85 percent to 31.51. For those who earn less than $50,000, it’s increased from 31.67 to 44.53. In Georgia, the under $50,000 filers who pay nothing has risen from 34.09 to almost half, 49.21. Thanks, George. And so much for all that rhetoric about “tax cuts for the rich.” That’s the good news. The flip side of that is that increasing numbers of Americans become oblivious to the cost of government — and, worse, see it as a deep-pocketed daddy. The top 50 percent pay 96.7 percent of the income taxes; the bottom 50, 3.3 percent, according to the Tax Foundation.
The two trends are in many respects disturbing. Marriage, with a mother and father in the home, is a child’s best hope for a happy, healthy and secure transition to adulthood. For children, everything else is make-do. For society, it’s the bedrock institution. The reality that marrieds are a declining percentage of households is of concern, if indeed it represents a changing view that marriage is just another lifestyle option. The concern with taxes is, of course, that those who don’t pay don’t care how big government grows or how much it costs. Of concern, these two trends? I say yes. You say….
