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Marriage Penalties

What's good and what's bad in Bush's tax plan.

Feb 26, 2001, Vol. 6, No. 23 • By ALLAN CARLSON and DAVID BLANKENHORN
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WHEN MARRIAGE BUFFS (like us) consider President Bush's proposed tax cuts, we don't obsess over whether they will be good for the economy, or for certain government programs, or for the Republican party. We lose sleep over whether they will be good for the institutions of marriage and the family. And for those who share our little fixation, here's the skinny: President Bush's tax plan contains one very good idea and one very bad one.

The good idea is doubling the child tax credit, from $500 to $1,000. This increase would reflect the principle that raising children is not only a private lifestyle choice, like raising geraniums, but also a socially necessary vocation that deserves and requires support from society.

Unlike reducing marginal rates, which disproportionately benefits the affluent, the child tax credit is non-regressive; the poorest taxpaying family benefits from it just as much as (and proportionately more than) the richest. Moreover, unlike the notoriously unfair dependent care tax credit, which provides tax relief to parents using commercial child care, the child tax credit helps all taxpaying families with children. (Indeed, as part of this year's tax package, we hope that the president and Congress will finally correct the inequity at the heart of the dependent care tax credit, either by replacing it with an even larger child tax credit -- say, $1,500 per child -- or by making it available on a non-discriminatory basis to all families with young children.)

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