As published on the op-ed page of the Indianapolis Star, 9/4/2000

By Steve Sanders

George Bush may someday be able to coherently explain his own tax plan. He and the Republicans in Congress may yet fool enough people into thinking it's a common-sense, populist idea to repeal the "death tax," which, in fact, taxes only about 2 percent of all deaths in this country since the estate involved has to be worth at least $675,000.

But they already know they've got a winner with their crusade against the "marriage penalty," one of those quirks in the tax code that's easy to demagogue as a IRS bureaucratic plot against traditional families. So vast is the issue in its potential for pandering that Al Gore has embraced it as well.

President Clinton showed remarkable backbone by vetoing a "marriage penalty relief" bill the Republicans sent him.

Here's how the "penalty" works. When you make more money, eventually it puts you in a higher tax bracket. When a husband and wife combine their incomes and file together, that sometimes puts them in a higher tax bracket than they'd be in if they were filing as individuals. Married couples also get a smaller standard deduction than two unmarried people.

It's probably possible to fix this problem in a way that would benefit modest earners. The GOP bill - surprise! - gave most of its relief to the wealthy. But leaving aside the fact two people living under the same roof live more cheaply than two singles (and the fact that couples with one partner making most of the money actually benefit from current law), the debate on this issue, or rather the lack of serious debate, says something about how seldom we recognize the privileged status that licensed couples already enjoy in our society.

Our public and private sectors provide a vast array of benefits, privileges and subsidies available only to married people. These are dispensed directly by, and protected by laws existing at, all levels of government. They're also doled out by employers, service providers and business establishments.

For example, if you're married, the law guarantees you can take time off from your job to care for an ailing spouse. Should they die, you automatically inherit their pension and Social Security. And if you decide to re-marry someone from another country, he or she gets bumped to the front of the immigration line.

In most states, the law provides immunity from testimony against spouses, guarantees your right to visit them in the hospital and make medical decisions on their behalf, gives you the benefit of the doubt if they die without a will and, in case of an accident or negligence, lets you sue and recover damages for wrongful death.

Indeed, the special rights and protections extend to all sorts of things most people never think about until they have to: adoption, child custody, property taxes, bankruptcy. (Needless to say, no gay or lesbian couples need apply for any of these things, except in Vermont, where right-wingers are vowing to bring down their wrath against legislators who enacted the state's new "civil unions" for same-sex couples.)

And these are only the benefits that flow directly from the government. A marriage license is also the world's greatest preferred-customer card. By officially blessing them, the law makes married couples eligible for huge savings in employer-provided health insurance, discounted rates at their local health club and all sorts of similar favors.

(At Indiana University, where I work, employee-spouses can take a class each semester at half price and work out at the campus gym afterward.)

Unlike marriage itself, none of these great legal and social innovations were, so far as we know, ordained by God. Yet millions of single people and couples who don't or can't choose to marry pay to support a vast web of "family-friendly" laws and policies, even while they and their families are pointedly excluded from them.

Yes, marriage is a vital social institution, and some of the legal rights involved are just common sense. But most of these perks also carry real economic value. So when we pay our membership dues each April 15 to keep this thoughtful and generous society running, why shouldn't married people pay a little more?