Ok, what are the benefits then?
You stated huge tax breaks in your reply but didn't mention what they were. The rest of your reply is about making decisions, not related to taxes.
Amount of income tax paid tends to be less for a married couple, verses if the couple files separately. The exception being, if both individuals separately have enough income to be in the same high tax bracket.
I don't think you have to be married to jointly file taxes, though.
Source: Not an IRS accountant.
I'm pretty sure you do have to be married (or domestic partnership) to file jointly. You may be thinking of Head of Household tax rates that are better than single filers'. There's :
Single (or Married filing separately)
Married filing jointly
Head of Household
Look at the tax rates - Head of Household isn't as big of a savings. For example, the 22% bracket.
A big one is that we automatically inherit the stuff we co-own when the other one dies without having to pay any sort of capital gains tax.
Depending on the person's will. But yeah that was the only one I can think of. I don't consider inheritance upon death to be part of the tax benefits of marriage though.
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