%0 Journal Article
%T Hesitating at the Altar:  An Update on Taxes and the Timing of Marriage
%A Margaret McKeehan
%A Nick Frazier
%J Public Finance Review
%@ 1552-7530
%D 2018
%R 10.1177/1091142116687841
%X This article provides evidence that the US tax code¡¯s dependence on marital status continues to generate an implicit marriage tax and distort marital decisions. By looking at the timing of marriage rather than the decision to marry, we capture a specific distortion while allowing for heterogeneity in other costs of marriage. Using data on couples from the Panel Study on Income Dynamics between 1986 and 2011, we find that a 1 percent rise in the size of the marriage tax relative to a couple¡¯s income increases the probability of delay by 1.2 percentage points. We further demonstrate the robustness of this result across a variety of alternative specifications and assumptions regarding tax-filing behavior
%K marriage tax
%K tax credits
%K EITC
%K timing
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1091142116687841