Are there tax benefits of marriage?
Key takeaways
Marriage can affect your taxes through marriage bonuses or penalties, depending on income differences between spouses.
Filing strategies and additional benefits — like IRA contributions for a non-working spouse and estate tax protections — can influence your tax outcome.
Understanding these factors can help you decide when to optimize your filing approach or consult a tax professional.
Getting married comes with several advantages, including legal and tax benefits. In some cases, marriage may have little to no effect on a couple's tax situation. However, there are instances where getting married could potentially increase a couple's tax burden.
If you are planning to get married, among the many other thoughts likely racing through your brain, you might be wondering how your taxes will be impacted once you’ve walked down the aisle and started filing jointly. Here’s what to know.
Factors that lead to potential tax benefits from marriage
Your filing status as a couple (married filing separately versus married filing jointly) is key when determining the tax burden of each individual or the couple jointly. Getting married and filing separately is always an option, and usually an attractive one for individuals for whom filing jointly might be disadvantageous.
Factors outside filing status that can influence whether a couple benefits from marriage¹ include:
- Each individual’s income
- The combined income of the couple
- Back taxes owed by either spouse
- Non-tax debts owed by either spouse (i.e. student loans in default or delinquent child support)
The unexpected benefit in tax bills paid by a couple that arises from filing jointly after marriage is called a marriage bonus. Note that not everyone will benefit from filing jointly after marriage.
The factors listed above may positively impact tax bills after marriage, but they can also negatively impact a couple’s tax burden. In these instances, the unexpected tax disadvantage paid by a couple that arises from filing jointly after marriage is called a marriage penalty.²
Below, we discuss marriage bonuses and marriage penalties in greater detail.
Marriage bonuses
Most of the time, when two people get married, they file jointly. Per the IRS, when filing jointly, “you and your spouse report your combined income and deduct your combined allowable expenses”.³
You can still file jointly even if one spouse had no income or deductions for that tax year. In fact, doing so will likely lower your joint tax burden, and it may also raise your standard deduction and qualify you for additional tax benefits, resulting in a marriage bonus.
Even if both spouses report income and/or deductions, if the difference between incomes is fairly large, a marriage bonus is likely to result.
In other words, marriage bonuses are usually a result of two individuals with disparate income marrying and filing jointly.
Specifically, tax burden is reduced when income is raised by being combined, but the couple’s tax bracket is unchanged.
Marriage penalties
Filing jointly after marriage may result in a marriage penalty. In cases where this is true, couples often choose to file taxes separately.⁴
Marriage penalties commonly happen as the result of two individuals with similar or equal incomes marrying.
As of February 2025, marriage penalties apply mostly to couples where both individuals’ incomes fall into the highest tax bracket, or 37%, meaning their combined income is $751,600 or more. That’s because all tax brackets for married filers are currently exactly double those for single filers under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
If you and your spouse make less than this jointly, as of now, you should qualify for marriage bonuses. In other words, you should experience the tax benefits of marriage.
There are some instances where lower income couples may experience marriage penalties due to reasons other than income, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
When to contact a tax professional
If in doubt about how marriage will affect you and your potential spouse’s tax burden, we recommend reaching out to a qualified tax professional for individualized answers and advice. This guide is only meant to act as an informational resource, and your situation may require analysis by a skilled expert in the U.S. tax code.
Other tax benefits of marriage
In addition to marriage bonuses, there are other potential tax benefits of marriage⁵ that a qualified tax professional should have in-depth knowledge about, including:
- Your spouse may be a tax shelter
- Jobless spouses can contribute to an IRA
- Couples may “benefit-shop” & leverage tax-advantaged accounts such as FSAs
- Married couples may be eligible for higher charitable contribution deductions
- Marriage can protect the estate and eliminate estate tax for surviving spouses
- Filing one return is generally easier than filing two
Learn more about taxes before, during, and after marriage
Tax implications of marriage can vary greatly based on each individual or couple’s unique situation. If you have additional questions about your specific situation, consulting a tax professional is recommended. Otherwise, for more information about taxes and how taxation works, we invite you to visit our Tax Guides.
Related Content
The above article is intended to provide generalized financial information designed to educate a broad segment of the public; it does not give personalized tax, investment, legal, or other business and professional advice. Before taking any action, you should always seek the assistance of a professional who knows your particular situation for advice on taxes, your investments, the law, or any other business and professional matters that affect you and/or your business.
Sources
¹https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/news/tax-tips/tas-tax-tip-got-married-here-are-some-tax-ramifications-to-consider-and-actions-to-take-now/2024/08/
²https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-marriage-penalty/
³https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501#en_US_2024_publink1000220742
⁴https://www.irs.gov/publications/p501#en_US_2024_publink1000220762
⁵https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/marriage/7-tax-advantages-of-getting-married/L1XlLCh0m
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