Excerpt: Question 9
Single and Paying for It

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A single person who doesn’t earn enough to escape poverty may still owe income taxes.

Ask the Candidate:

Why shouldn’t Congress do for single persons what it does for a family of four—exempt them from income tax until their income rises well above the poverty level?

Sometimes (you may say, often) one policy of Congress is so wildly inconsistent with another that you wonder if anyone up there, or down there, knows the big picture.

Congress, presumably to promote family values, has set the income tax threshold—the level of income at which we begin to pay taxes—for a typical married couple with two young children at about 2-1/2 times their official poverty threshold. The government establishes poverty thresholds each year in part so that it can calculate the number of us who are “poor.” But Congress clearly recognizes that a family of four needs income far above its poverty threshold before it should have to pay even one dollar of income tax.

Congress is noticeably less sympathetic to the plight of single persons— people who are unmarried and have no dependent children. Their miserly poverty threshold is almost identical to their income tax threshold—in fact, their poverty threshold is actually a bit higher. It’s time for Congress to recognize that single persons deserve the government’s compassion under the tax laws too.