Time To Eliminate Joint Filing ?
The trilemma holds that an income tax cannot simultaneously maintain progressive marginal rates, impose equal taxes on equal-earning couples, and insist on marriage neutrality.
What Were They Thinking ?
One of the ways to buy time is “managing payables”. In its extreme form you only pay bills to vendors who are capable of and prone to exacting immediate revenge like shutting off the lights. When operating in this mode there is a great temptation to not deposit payroll withholding.
Follow Me
Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.