various provisions of the tax law that require married people to pay more taxes in some situations than if they were single. The penalty is most pronounced for higher-taxbracket couples earning equal amounts of income. Although married taxpayers may file separate returns, the total tax result will not be the same as if they were unmarried and may even be more than the result from the joint return.
effect of a tax code that makes a married couple pay more than the same two people would pay if unmarried and filing singly. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 gradually phased out the marriage penalty through 2009. This phaseout of the marriage penalty was accelerated in the jobs and growth tax relief reconciliation act of 2003. This act increased the standard deduction for married joint filers to twice the standard deduction for single taxpayers and widened the size of the 15% tax bracket to double the size of the bracket for single taxpayers.
