TAX BY GOVERNMENT

 

Martin D. Ginsburg (as written by Daniel Stiepleman in O.T.B.O.S) said that Tax is the only genuinely funny area of the law. 

Young people in Sweden around 1950 weren't getting married. They were getting engaged. They were still living together. Still having kids, raising a family, but they were not getting married. 

It's because of taxes. After the war, Sweden passed a law that said married couples will now file joint income tax returns. They weren't given any of the benefits from it. So, married Swedes were finding themselves in the uncomfortable position of now being in a higher tax bracket. So they got divorced. Of course, they were still living together. 

So the Swedish government then passes a new law that says, Married couples who get divorced but continue to live together for tax purposes, will be considered still married. So they did what anyone would do. They add a second entrance to their home with a nice wall that goes right down the middle with doors for easy access. 

The Swedish government passes new law - Once married, now divorced couples living in a two-income household "that is subdivided would," again, for tax purposes, "be considered living together, and therefore..." Therefore, still married. 

This went on for decades. 

All the while, a whole generation of Swedes simply skirted the issue by never getting married in the first place. 

The moral of this story is that in their attempt to raise revenue, the Swedish government ruined all those young men's best hope at happiness. Because how a government taxes its citizens is a direct declaration of a country's values.