Bachelor tax

A bachelor tax is a punitive tax imposed on unmarried men (bachelors) and/or unmarried women (bachelorettes). In the modern era, many countries do vary tax rates by marital status, so current references to bachelor taxes are typically implicit rather than explicit; and given the state of tax law is very complicated, as tax accountancy concepts like income splitting can come into play.

Such explicit measures historically would be instituted as part of a moral panic or homophobia due to the important status given to marriage at various times and places, as in the Roman Empire under Augustus' moral legislation or in various U.S. state legislatures in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Frequently, this would be attached to racial policies (e.g., as part of the Apartheid legislation) and/or nationalistic reasons (as in Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany).

More recently, bachelor taxes were viewed as related to tax on childlessness, which were used frequently in the Eastern Bloc by communist member states of the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War (1945–1990).