[to11mtm]

Well, yes and no.

Single Income Married families have some benefits, or if one party makes a lot less than the other. However there are other disadvantages in some cases; after my first wife got married to me, her financial aid went into the toilet. Even though I was making less than 50k a year myself (and paying enough in student loans/etc that we were barely making ends meet,) that income counted against her. [0]

[0] - Filing separately (as we did once we were separated before our divorce) had it's own disadvanatges; namely that I could no longer declare my student loan interest on my taxes.

[dgildeh]

Thanks both - I actually did put a paragraph about this in the blog then took it out as the blog was too long, there are definitely differences between married vs. single in US/UK, but I wanted to look more at the worst case scenario.

Most of my friends/colleagues are not aware that for at least single tax filers, the difference between UK/California is less than 5%, I think its assumed Europe is significantly higher, and that's not the case anymore as the US bureaucracy has grown!