When it comes to filing joint taxes, who gets their name listed first – the husband or the wife? According to a recent study conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan and the U.S. Treasury Department, this decision can reveal a lot about a couple’s beliefs and attitudes.
Although gender roles in America have evolved significantly over the past three decades, the tradition of putting the husband’s name first on joint tax returns remains prevalent. The study, which analyzed a random sample of joint tax returns filed between 1996 and 2020, found that men were listed before women in heterosexual couples a staggering 88% of the time in returns filed in 2020.
This dominance of male listing is much higher than expected if couples simply listed the higher earner first, according to Joel Slemrod, an economics professor at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study.
Surprisingly, same-sex married couples consistently listed the older and wealthier partner’s name first more often than heterosexual couples, suggesting that traditional gender expectations may outweigh financial considerations in some cases.
According to Slemrod, “There’s a very, very high correlation between the fraction of returns when the man’s name goes first and self-professed political attitudes.”
The order of names varied significantly among states, with Iowa leading the way at 90% of the time listing the man first, followed by Washington, D.C. at 79%. By cross-referencing the filers’ addresses with political attitudes in their respective states, the researchers concluded that listing the man first on a return strongly indicated conservative social and political beliefs.
Man-first filers showed a 61% likelihood of describing themselves as highly religious, a 65% likelihood of being politically conservative, a 70% likelihood of being Christian, and a 73% likelihood of opposing abortion.
Slemrod added, “In some couples, I guess they think the man should go first in everything, and putting the man’s name first is one example.”
Listings with the man’s name first were also associated with riskier financial behavior, consistent with previous research showing that men tend to take more risks than women. These returns were more likely to include stocks rather than bonds or simple bank accounts, and were also more likely to involve tax evasion, as determined by matching returns with random IRS audits.
While there is evidence of a shift in tax filers’ behavior, with nearly 25% of married couples who started filing jointly in 2020 listing the woman’s name first, long-time joint filers are unlikely to change their name order due to the IRS discouraging it. The agency’s instructions for a joint tax return warn that listing names in a different order than the previous year could result in processing delays.
“That kind of cements the name order,” Slemrod explained, “so any gender norms we had 20 or 30 years ago are going to persist.”
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