The marriage penalty is (mostly) gone

One thing to notice from these brackets is that the so-called marriage penalty, which many Republican leaders (including President Trump) wanted to eliminate, is almost absent.

If you're not familiar, here's a simplified version of how the marriage penalty works. Let's say that two single individuals each earned a taxable income of $90,000 per year. Under the old 2018 tax brackets, both of these individuals would fall into the 25% bracket for singles. However, if they were to get married, their combined income of $180,000 would catapult them into the 28% bracket. Under the new brackets, they would fall into the 24% marginal tax bracket, regardless of whether they got married or not.

In fact, the married filing jointly income thresholds are exactly double the single thresholds for all but the two highest tax brackets in the new tax law. In other words, the marriage penalty has been effectively eliminated for everyone except married couples earning more than $400,000.