Putting your taxes together, you may have noticed that many details of your personal life change how much you pay. Are you married? Do you have kids? Do you pay for child care, or does one parent stay home?
These details and their accompanying policies are, essentially, the tax code’s answer to the “mommy wars” between working mothers and their stay-at-home counterparts, providing at least a little of something to everyone: better tax brackets for this, a credit for that. It can be hard for an individual taxpayer to figure out what they owe–and even harder for the concerned citizen to figure out how it all adds up across society and which types of families receive the most favorable treatment.
