Monday, March 23, 2009

AIG Bonus Tax and Married Couples

It's time for more gratuitous promotion of family members.

My sister has a piece up at the TaxProf Blog arguing that the tax on the AIG bonuses is sexist. The essential argument is that as written the tax will trigger additional taxation for married couples even when only one spouse received a bonus. Since most of the people receiving bonuses are men, this tax effectively punishes women who are married and are not stay-at-home wives. I'm not sure I would call this sexist since the result is not intentional. However, the result is unacceptable.

2 comments:

PG said...

Why is this any more of a problem than the longstanding practice of taxing a married couple based on their joint income? I've heard conservatives argue that if the wife's income will push the couple into a higher tax bracket, she just ought to stay home instead or at least take a job that requires fewer hours. Somehow they never consider that perhaps the husband is the lower earner and ought to be the one to cut back or stay home.

Hepius said...

I don't see how the tax on AIG bonuses can be legal. How can it be legal to place a 90% tax on a specific group of people? What would stop the government from using this power to suppress "enemies"? Maybe I need a lesson in Constitutional Law.