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Abstract: Joint tax filing for married couples raises personal and politically-charged questions about the nature of family and marriage. Where do self-identified tax experts stand? To what extent have academic critiques of joint filing permeated the expert tax community? To start understanding the answers to these questions, we asked a group of experts about their joint filing experiences and attitudes. Our fifty-eight respondents overwhelmingly had personal experience with joint filing and were largely white and Democratic Party/independent-identified. Most reported pooling income with their spouse (83%) and agreed that joint filing reflected the economic reality of their marriage (84%). However, when asked how they would design a tax system from scratch (i.e., offer joint filing or require individual filing), respondents were sharply divided and often ambivalent. Individual filing was preferred by 38%, joint filing by 34%, and 21% selected “other” or “don’t know.” Comments suggested that, among those who preferred joint filing, respondents identified tradeoffs involved, thereby conveying some critical awareness. And, among the 72% of the sample that identified as tax law academics, by whom most of the criticism of joint filing has been published, support for individual filing was highest (45%). While our small sample had significant shortcomings, our results suggest that those in the homogeneous (white, liberal/independent, usually male) world of academic tax experts do acknowledge critiques of joint filing, but their experiences may not align with the critiques.
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