The overwhelming emphasis on the trilemma is surprising once one recognizes that there is in fact no trilemma at all: we need not choose among couples neutrality, marriage neutrality, and progressivity because we can have all three. Most casebooks, meanwhile, use the trilemma to introduce students to the policy debate over the taxation of marriage and the household. Numerous articles have proposed responses to the trilemma that choose two of the legs over a third or that seek to split the difference among the competing neutrality norms that the trilemma casts as desirable. The “trilemma” refers to the mathematical impossibility of constructing a tax system that imposes the same tax liability across all married couples with the same income (couples neutrality), neither encourages nor penalizes marriage (marriage neutrality), and taxes higher income individuals at higher rates (progressivity). For decades, the well-known “marriage tax trilemma” has played a central role in discussions of the tax treatment of the family unit.
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