A Brief History of Marriage in the Tax Code

• Understand the earliest form of taxation, from 1862
• Explain how taxes worked when our current version of the tax code started in 1913
• Explain how taxes changed once the U.S. entered World War I
• Understand the basics of community property law
• Identify how community property law created a loophole in the tax law
• Understand the debate over how to tax married couples in the 1920s
• Identify the key Supreme Court case (Poe vs. Seaborn) from 1930
• Understand how filing statuses worked when Congress created them in 1948
• Identify key changes to tax law through the years after 1948 relating to filing statuses
• Understand how the marriage penalty works
• Understand how tax law still creates oddities where sometimes married couples pay more in taxes, and sometimes less in taxes, by either getting married or by staying single