##Marriage Penalty and Marriage Bonus Calculator

This Repo Contains the data and code for the paper: "Understanding the Marriage Penalty and Marriage Bonus" Link : http://taxfoundation.org/article/understanding-marriage-penalty-and-marriage-bonus

This calculator's data was featured in both the New York Times and Fivethirtyeight piece on the marriage penalty

• NYT link: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/16/upshot/marriage-penalty-couples-income.html
• Fivethirtyeight link: http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/marriage-penalty/

Files:

• data.csv: A data set with two variables: income from 10,000 to 1,000,000 scaled by 100^1/100 and ratios from 1 to .5
• fedtax.csv: A data set with income tax parameters. These parameters are read by the tax calculator functions
• newdata.csv: A data set with two variables: income from 10,000 to 1,000,000 scaled by 200^1/200 and ratios from 1 to .5
• newdata400.csv: A data set with two variables: income from 10,000 to 1,000,000 scaled by 400^1/400 and ratios from 1 to .5
• avgfunctions.R: An R script that defines all the functions for the tax calculator
• marginalfunctions.R: An alternative script that properly measures marginal tax rates (it smooths IRS rounding)
• *Marriage Marginal.R: A test script that looks at second-earner penalties for married couples (STILL TESTINGS)
• Penalty Checker.R: The main R script that calculates all output data
• There are also misc. output files in the repo produced by the Penalty Checker.R script

##File Details

data/newdata/newdata400.csv:

Variable	Defintion
income	Income in dollars from 10,000 to 1 million. Scaling depends on number of observations (see above)
multiplier	The percent of total family income the primary earner brings home

avgfunctions.R

• The same functions exist in marginalfunctions.R, they are only slightly altered

Function and Inputs	Defintion
AMT(income,married)	calculates AMT based on income and marrital status
FedCTC(income,children,married	calculates Child Tax Credit based on income, number of children and marrital status. Automatically accounts for refundability
FedEITC(income,children,married)	calculates Earned Income Tax Credit based on income, children, and marrital status
FedEmployeePayrollTax(income,married)	calculates employee payroll tax. implicitly assumes income is split 50-50 between earners.
FedEmployerPayrollTax(income,married)	calculates employee payroll tax. implicitly assumes income is split 50-50 between earners.
FedIncomeTax(taxableincome,married,hoh)	calculates income tax burden given taxable income, and filing status. hoh CANNOT = 1 if married = 1
FedTaxableIncome(income,children,married,hoh,stateincometax)	calculates federal taxable income given income, children, filing status. It will also switch to the state and local income tax deduction once it is greater than the standard deduction
FedUI(income,married,stateui)	calculates the federal unemployment insurance payroll tax based on income and marrital status and state ui. Implict 50-50 split for married couples
MedSurtax(income,married)	calculates the 0.9 percent medicare surtax based on income and marrital status
StateEITC(eitc,stateparam)	NOT USED: calculates state Earned income tax credit based on fed EITC and state law
StateIncomeTax(statetaxableincome,married,hoh,stateparam)	NOT USED: calculates state income tax based on state taxable income and filing status
StateParameters(state)	NOT USED: for a given state ID number, returns state income tax code parameters
StatePersonalCredit(income,statetaxableincome,married,hoh,stateparam)	NOT USED: Calculates a state "personal credit" given income and state parameters. Usually in replace of a state standard deduction or personal exemption
StateUI(income,married,stateparam)	NOT USED: State UI given income and state UI parameters

fedtax.csv

• Contains federal income tax parameters (not all used for marriage penalty)