The Washington Times recently featured Allen Quist’s health care bill research in an editorial titled Obamacare’s marriage penalty. The Washington Times writes, in part:
… what is even worse is that the subsidies are suddenly and completely cut off once somebody reaches 400 percent of the official poverty-level income ($63,360 in 2016). The arithmetic is complicated, but what it means is that two unmarried persons earning $32,000 each ($64,000 total) would pay a maximum combined $5,684 in premiums, but if they got married, they would pay about $15,000. That is an astonishing penalty of 164 percent. It is almost impossible to imagine a policy that could be any more anti-family than that.
Again, that was for middle-income earners receiving government subsidies in lieu of employer tax breaks for insurance. Now consider a high-earning couple. The Senate bill imposes a payroll tax increase on individuals who make more than $200,000. For married couples, though, the tax increase kicks in at $250,000. So, if you live together without matrimony, you can earn up to $400,000 combined without the higher tax – $150,000 more than you can earn together if you are married. At a maximum of $1,350, this marriage penalty through taxation isn’t anywhere near as damaging as the $9,316 knockout punch via lost subsidies for the $64,000 couple described above, but it’s still nothing to take lightly.
Read the full editorial here. You can also read Quist’s original research publication here.
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