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Comment by michaelleland | Hacker News Reader

The tax credits for married people here in the US seem to be part of this type of policy, no?

There are no U.S. tax credits per se for married vs. unmarried taxpayers. Depending on the relative incomes of two spouses, there can be a so-called "marriage penalty" or "marriage reward" from combining two incomes on a joint return, but that alone probably has very little impact on whether people choose to get or remain married.

In fact, a large chunk of existing tax law deals with all the possible combinations of households with children and parents, where the parents may or may not be living together, and may or may not be married to each other. It is designed to fairly accomodate unmarried people, not to encourage marriage.

The tax penalty (which is very real for many SV and NYC earners) is one reason I’ve decided to never get married. The other being that the insane one-size fits all contractual aspects of marriage that cannot be changed.

A vengeful judge and spouse can easily wreck one’s finances unfairly.

Being single parent can also file for the deduction. Receiving supposal and child support after tax also encourages divorce, which also encourages the benefiting party not to go to work or do works that doesn't pay taxes. I'd say the current policy is more encouraging of divorce than two-parent household.

Unless someone is severely disabled, spousal support is a horrible thing. Even worse are the states that make it compulsory after a certain number of years.

Child support makes sense in theory, but is butchered in practice. The judgements often have little to do with how much it actually costs to support the child and is more about a percentage of income.

Let's not forget, the state is the third party in a divorce. They do not want to support anyone when they can force one of the other parties to do so.

The state also gets a 10% rake off the top, which is why child support judgments are so enthusiastically enforced.

Is that the court fee or something else?

It's not a flat percentage exactly and it varies by state[1]. I'm not sure how I got 10% in my head maybe that's roughly the average?

[1] https://calmatters.org/projects/california-keeps-millions-in...

That article says the average retained is about 3.8% nationally. It sounds like what the government is getting it from interest on unpaid support.

Except if the benefiting party receiving spousal support and child support is after tax, so they don't report that as income. So, if they don't work, they qualify for unemployment benefits (at very least the Medicaid) - the government still pays. Speaking from my own experience. My ex is now trying to fight to get more child support because my son is on my healthcare plan my employer offers, she wants to put him on Medicaid like her and get the money instead. In other words, government still going to pay. I think her lawyer didn't agree with her because it's not the best interest for our kid and could be a waste of time. Although I think it's terribly for the higher earner in the divorce, I can't blame her for gaming the system. It is well set up for her to take advantage of this divorce situation. I even know there are women have multiple children from different men just so they can live luxuriously - none of child support is counted towards income when calculating other child support - the only risk is some men rather go to prison than paying lol.

Spousal support is an archaic holdover that doesn’t belong anymore and child support should not be a thing offered in at fault divorces. For the latter I’m not sure how you can go about implementing that ethically though. If the dad cheated, fine, he should pay child support. If the mom cheats, maybe the state can subsidize daycare while the mom is forced to work. Otherwise there are no consequences for the mom who can just “divorce him and take his house and half his money”.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Draconian laws tilting in favor of women definitely contribute to reluctance of men to get married or to have kids.

It’s going to be downvoted for a few years while the true state of things permeates through the society. It’s just a matter of constantly educating the 10,000 new people that learned about it today.

There are still tax disadvantages for some married couples (used to be all, assuming both worked).

However, there are also plenty of welfare programs that are means tested so marriage is ruled out.

(One of the leading theories for the number of babies born out of wedlock rising so much since the early 1960s is the end of the shotgun wedding: the baby daddy counters by pointing out that the mom will lose out on a lot of benefits if she gets married)

There is an additional Medicare tax of 0.9% if single income exceeds 200k, but if you file jointly, that limit is 250k. So a married couple with each earning 125k+ would pay more tax than an unmarried couple where person made 200k.

This hardly mattered years ago, but with median wages getting around 70k+, a lot more people pay this penalty for getting married.

You can actually benefit from being single filers (non-married) by choosing who claims what to get the biggest breaks. Not being married means you can also mix and match certain things that you otherwise might not be able to, like regular vs Roth IRAs (although I think this is state level).

There aren't any tax credits for married couples. There are tax credits for parents, and they aren't reduced by divorce. The tax benefits of filing "married" isn't any better than filing as "head of household" (which doesn't require marriage), and filing as either sometimes provide a disadvantage when both parents are working and earn similar incomes.

In the US at least, the financial and legal incentives for women to divorce is far, far greater.

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