...Take the income tax law. If the husband works and the wife remains at home, the couple probably benefits from a marriage bonus -- paying less in taxes than if they were unmarried. But once the wife enters the labor market, things are very different. Even if she earns only the minimum wage, the wife will be in her husband's federal income tax bracket. Add in payroll (FICA) taxes and state and local income taxes, and the wife of a middle-income husband will lose almost half of what she earns to taxes.

To add insult to injury, the couple probably will have to shell out extra money to replace some of the homemaker services the wife had been providing. According to the National Center for Policy Analysis, when all costs are netted out, the wife will be lucky if she gets to keep 35 cents out of every dollar she earns.

There are a number of ways to solve this problem, including allowing couples to file separate returns. It's vital that any assistance for the working wife in no way harms women who are able to stay at home. Owing to the possibility of death or other tragedy, every stay-at-home wife is a potential job seeker. Fairness to women who work for wages is in the interest of all women.

Our Social Security system also works reasonably well for the couple with a stay-at-home wife. When both spouses reach retirement age, the wife is entitled to a benefit equal to one-half her husband's, and she gets 100 percent of his benefit after he dies. All this is hers even though she never paid a dime in payroll taxes.

But for the wife who goes back and forth between home and work, or who works full time, the system is surprisingly harsh...