Independent Taxation, Horizontal Equity, and Return-Free Filing

HKS Affiliated Authors

Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government

Robert W. Scrivner Professor of Social Policy

Excerpt

Independent Taxation, Horizontal Equity, and Return-Free Filing. Jeffrey Liebman, 2019, Book Chapter, "Switching from joint to independent taxation of spouses in married couples would reduce marginal tax rates on secondary earners, make the tax system marriage neutral, and facilitate return-free filing through exact withholding. This switch would, however, abandon the perspective that total household income is the best measure of ability to pay. This paper investigates the vertical and horizontal equity implications of a switch from joint to independent taxation of the sort that might occur in conjunction with adoption of return-free filing." Link

In This Section

HKS Affiliated Authors

Excerpt

Financing trillion-dollar infrastructure projects? Here’s some advice

The Ghost Budget: How U.S. war spending went rogue, wasted billions, and how to fix it

I helped balance the federal budget in the 1990s – here’s just how hard it will be for the GOP to achieve that same rare feat