Marriage Tax Penalty

Re “The Fallacy of the Marriage ‘Penalty,’ ” by David Blankenhorn, Commentary, Feb. 3:

Obviously politicians don’t want to reduce two-earner married couples working, because it creates more day care centers, more jobs, more latchkey kids, more divorces, more taxes paid and they all vote.

The politicians should lead our country by asking parents to be more responsible with their children. If they really cared, they would continue penalizing dual-working married parents with school-age children and reward single-working married parents with large tax credits. With more stay-at-home parenting, parents will stop blaming teachers for their kids’ low performances in school when it’s really the parents’ fault.

TOM KONDZIELLA

Diamond Bar

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Blankenhorn pointed out the inequity of the Clinton and Bush proposals to reduce the amount of the marriage penalty. However, Blankenhorn likes the Al Gore tax idea of increasing the standard deduction for both single- and dual-earner couples. But that approach has a flaw for a significant number of couples because 60% of them are buying a home--so an increase in the standard deduction does them no good because their interest and property tax deductions are larger than the standard deduction.

The real solution to this inequity would be to create a higher personal exemption for married couples; say, $2,000 more per couple. This would reduce taxes as a new “marriage benefit” to offset the limited-impact “marriage penalty.” If all of us taxpayers are going to subsidize marriage, let’s do it for every marriage (assuming Prop. 22 doesn’t pass).

Maybe it would be better not to give a new benefit to married couples, who already have most of the benefits (tax and otherwise), but simply provide a renter’s credit (like California does) to the taxpayers who are really getting the dirty end of the stick.

CURT FEESE

Covina