fertility rates in countries that shift their policies to recognizing equal parental responsibility are also a factor in many countries abandoning fictional income splitting for tax measurement. In part because of these concerns, as well as child welfare policies that advocate recognizing both parents having personal responsibility for children in order to support their development without distortion, fictional income splitting is becoming rare globally, and, since 1970, it has been abolished in many countries. Some countries require joint returns but measure the tax on income individually, while others use only individual returns. Tax laws in these countries generally have regulations preventing the direct transfer of earned income from one spouse to another to reduce taxes. There are often still methods of using income splitting to reduce taxes in these jurisdictions. For those who own their own company, hiring family members will often reduce the overall tax burden by shifting income to lower-income family members. United States In the United States, tax benefits or "marriage bonuses" to married couples with only one breadwinner (or with a breadwinner earning the bulk of the couple's income) have been cited by the Tax Policy Center as one of the debt-ballooning policies of the Bush tax cuts. The Tax Policy Center asserts that these "marriage bonuses" (received by the greater or sole earner in the marriage) and "marriage penalties" (paid by the lesser or non-earner in the marriage) are often subsidized by single people and two-earner marriages or are unfunded and thus contribute to government borrowing. While its effects on the national debt have increased substantially in recent years, income splitting became required for married persons filing jointly in the United States in 1948. After two successive vetoes by President Harry S. Truman, a GOP-led effort in Congress obtained enough votes to institute the splitting of marital income. Until then, only single filing was permitted. However, couples in community property states such as California had access to de facto fictional income splitting, since one-half of the income of one spouse could be fictionally attributed to the other spouse. This led to issues of patriarchal taxpayers in community property states paying lower tax rates than patriarchal taxpayers in common law states and hastened the passage of de jure income splitting. While other solutions to this distortion in community property states were available, political activism to establish a male entitlement (or first right) to paid work, and