Why I remain unconvinced about the Tories' tax break for married couples

C

Peter. My main criticism of the points you make is that you are purely viewing the £20 a week tax break in isolation, as a single measure. In reality it is part of a wider set of initiatives that aim to incentivise (not force) the kind of behaviour that research says has benefits in many ways. As such it must be viewed in those terms and not as a policy in its own right.

Pete Hoskin

C: Of course I'm viewing it in isolation! As I say at the end of my piece, it's the tax break I disagree with - not necessarily other Tory ideas about marriage. I think they can still be implemented, that marriage can still be supported by the government, without the tax break.

Tiberius

Pete; you're replicating your fundamental error.

You're looking at this from the perspective of the unmarried (as if they are the default family grouping), rather than the discriminated against married couples, who have been the default family grouping worldwide, and have brought Western civilization to where it is.

Jim

If there are benefit losses for a couple if they marry, then it seems only fair to replace those losses in some way, so married couples on benefit are not getting less than their unmarried or single compatriots.

The issue arises in that the tax system affects ALL married couples, not just those on benefit. So the only alternatives are to pay less benefit to single mothers, or have a benefit that only married couples can claim.

Why is the latter not possible?

C Powell

Pete: you're conflating two issues. (1) Should marriage be supported / recognised in the tax system? My view is that it should and that the perverse effects we have now in our tax and benefit system - where especially for poorer people - it makes financial sense to be separated rather than be married, should be removed.

(2) The second is whether this £20 proposal is the best way of achieving that or whether what money there is should be used differently. But that is a question about means not ends.

But you are also wrong in saying that the only basis for judging this is the fiscal one. I don't know whether the effect will be very great: it may only affect a relatively small number of people but the costs saved may well be considerably larger. Second, I do think we should make a moral judgment about the kind of society we should be; we should say that stable families are the best way of bringing up children and that the state, at the very least, should not undermine that basic unit of society - as too much policy over recent years has done - and should seek to assist families in some small way. This shouldn't be the only policy of course; plenty of others are needed but throughout public policy there should be a default assumption that families are important and that they should be supported and recognised not devalued just because currently we have malevolent moral relativists in charge or people afraid of making any sort of judgment.

An example of the sort of small change I have in mind: it should be possible on forms to say that you are married not have your status subsumed into the all-purpose "partner" or "co-habitee" or some other euphemism. Why should married people be brushed out of official existence?

Ray

"A £20-a-week tax break for married couples is rather like carpet bombing when a smart bomb would be more suitable."

I accept the gist of your argument, Pete. In which case, I suppose one could means-test it.

However, as with Child Benefit Allowance and Child Tax Credits, once you start 'means-testing' things you then have to recruit a whole army of bureaucrats just to sift through all the paperwork generated, with all the huge expense involved (to say nothing of creating yet another the 'poverty trap' in the tax and benefits system).

Puncheon

It's children that make the difference. Two people decide to live together, that's their business. But as soon as they decide to breed it is not, since the rest of us will be paying for their education, health, pensions, crimes and so on. All Governments need to do is stop bribing unmarried females to breed. On the contrary they should place a tax on those who breed as a contribution to everything their children will subsequently take out of society. It's not as though we are short of human beings, is it?

Crystal Bullet

The £20 marriage tax break would work well as a decision extraneous to the discussion which claimants and front-line staff must have about “progress". However to work best it would be required to introduce a new concept of “materiality” into the accountancy of benefit payments. Unless improved flexibility is programmed into the software used, more money can be spent clawing back over-payments from a welfare recipient than received. No private company would employ an accountant who ignored the principle of materiality and billed them more than that gained from chasing the immaterial amounts to balance their accounts. Currently, local governments receive awards for such penny-pinching practices. It is one of the contradictions under socialism that those in the front-line of delivering services are less inclined to turn a blind-eye because they feel benefit claimants are cheating their preferred government, not a right-wing government they feel alien to.

A reform of the computerised benefits system needs to both acknowledge this human factor as well as the political challenge of proposing the reform in such a way as people will vote for it. That produces a set of contradictions that the proposed reforms need to work around. That cannot be achieved in isolation but needs to tackle the “basket of options” a computerised system allows: training, enterprise, “on the sick”, married, children and job-seeking. The challenge for the “interaction design” behind such software is to predict not only how claimants will use it but how front-line staff will interpret the rules.

A new materiality in benefits must be the key concept. If the £20 marriage tax break were introduced without any improvement in the software system, the opportunity to target those whom it is intended to will not be realised. Those who are most morally inclined to marriage will receive it as a matter of course. Those who are most inclined to sign-up to “new deals” on the basis of financial incentives alone would be less willing. Not without it being part of a general reform of how the “basket of options” for welfare support is delivered by front-line staff. Incorporating a new concept of materiality in benefits would cuts the costs of the bureaucratic overhead and most importantly increase the willingness of the targeted claimants to sign-up to “new deals”, including marriage.

It is vitally important for those advocating marriage as a platform for social stability to realise their first target by nature is unlike-minded to them. Currently a benefits system wields automated financial claw-backs against this target group, making it resistant to “new deals” which trigger a cascade effect on eligibility to other benefits. For the £20 marriage tax break to work the problem is not so much an over spend on groups that are morally inclined to such partnerships anyway but under-spend on those groups likely to be economically unstable and fickle in all their choices (including staying married.)

Unless a “materiality in benefits” concept can be integrated into the proposals, a flood of new paperwork could arise. One group will hop from one marriage to another in the search of partners able to agree to “the deal” without triggering a negative cascade effect on their own benefits. It is undesirable for many reasons (including forced marriages in some communities). So a marriage tax break needs to be both assessed extraneously from other benefits and applied with the concept of “materiality in benefits” in mind. Otherwise it will not tame the backroom boys who enlarge their domains by pursing penny-pinching claw-backs at the tax-payer’s expense.

seb

How about a tax system that rewards men for looking after the children they've sired and penalises the ***tbags who can't be bothered to do this and who think that, having found a second/third/fourth woman to be their doormat, they are thereby excused from having to maintain children from earlier 'relationships'?

TGF UKIP

On this occasion Tiberius will not be surprised that I am in complete agreement with him.

GeoffH

We need to step back and look at how we got where we are with the tax system and what that has done to family relationships and the economy in general.

It is important to remember that a married couples tax allowance (coupled with further tax allowances for children) was once the norm and predicated on the assumption that there was only one major earner in a household.

If a wife worked, she did so only for short intervals before and after child rearing.

A mother at home was recognised to be good for the children and good for society, that was why a married man had a higher tax allowance and kept more of his own money.

Once the balance shifted with married women working more and for longer with less time at home child rearing, so the needs of children began to take second place. I dare to say, that was a bad thing all round.

Another consequence of double income households becoming the norm was that housing costs rose and it became essential for two incomes to meet the higher house prices.

Inflated house prices have become the shifting sands under our weakened economy.

Anything that encouraged a return to the idea of a single breadwinner would, in my view, be a 'good thing'.

In the interests of modern views, let that be a fully transferable tax allowance between man and wife and then they can decide who does the child rearing and who goes to work full time.

Napoleon

Peter, you totally right.

Crystal Bullet

Anything that encouraged a return to the idea of a single breadwinner would, in my view, be a 'good thing' – GeoffH

I feel I agree with all what you say up to this point. It is a pure joy to read how it used to be. However the conclusion of your last paragraph, by attempting to accommodate the “modern view”, is proposing the wrong solution. It is not good enough to simply allow for modernity by regarding sexuality as something to be flipped.

I would propose, to regain the role of motherhood, a restructuring of employment opportunities to take advantage of the home IT revolution. Incentives should exist for women, fresh out of university, to have children before developing any career. Men would quickly respond by behaving with responsibility. The IT revolution means women can regain intellectual and practical skills to launch careers with considerable ease from the comfort of home. Attempting to flip roles will never adequately resolve low birth rates or the medical problems associated with starting a family late. The modern pressure to drive women into professional careers or else never climb the ladder is completely absurd. Most jobs now demand constant re-skilling and the technology exists for it to be supplied direct to homes on tap as and when required. It is not young women who want to have children late. It is the fault of a modern society that sacrifices their youth to the free market and a twisted sense of normality.

EC

Of course when Tiberius says that, ".. married couples ... who have been the default family grouping worldwide, and have brought Western civilization to where it is" he/she is absolutely right. A lot of people who have commented here are right and Pete is also right. Tinkering under the bonnet when the big end has gone isn't going to make much difference. The engine needs completely stripping down and rebuilding.

I was brought up in the 1950's, it wasn't utopia but in many respects it was a better and safer place than exists today.

Today, you name it and it's either fiscally or morally bankrupt. The CofE must take their share of the blame. Self-serving, too interested in its own property portfolio, it was unable to adapt to post WW2 social change. It failed to give any meaningful spiritual guidance that was relevant to the human experience of the brave new materialistic world. It went down a Darwinian cul de sac. The clap happy brigade pulled off the masterstroke of patronising and alienating young and old alike. Now, like the government, it is run by communists.

Today, if you can actually find a job, then is it possible to keep and roof over one's head, feed and clothe oneself on £5.73 per hour less tax? If the answer is no then it is more than just married couples' tax allowances that needs fixing.

There is something wrong with a society where young people who are prepared to make the effort to better themselves are burdened with debt. If they are lucky enough have a job they'll be repaying student loans, paying high rents and have little chance of ever saving the huge deposit for a place of their own, let alone contemplating marriage and children until well into their late 30's. All this whilst the 3rd/4th generation of post WW2 welfare dependants on the sink estates of our towns and cities get everything for nothing, are expected to do nothing apart from vote Labour, and are currently breeding the next generation.

Verity's post 2010 election apocalyspe might be the only way of sorting the whole mess out. So maybe everyone should seriously think about voting labour!

2trueblue

What is wrong with rewarding people who work hard to stay together and bring up a family in a stable enviornment, thereby adding to the stability of society? Too boring and beyond the norm, eh?
Labour have mocked our conventions, thrown out anything decent, and rewarded those who want to be dependant on the state, creating a slavish mindset. Those who have worked hard and saved have been hardest hit so far. Why are people so frightened of rewarding those who try hardest to be decent and provide stability for their families?

Chloe

My parents are divorced and it's one of the best thing they have ever done for my sister and I. I see them both on a regular basis and am close to each of them. I've had an extremely happy and stable childhood which I'm sure would not have been the case had my parents tried to 'stay together for the kids'. They've also worked VERY hard to stand on their own two feet as single parents. Why should they be penalised when they did the best for their children? The tories need to leave their outdated beliefs out of government policy.

Chloe

Plus to the commenter who suggests a tax should be placed on 'unmarried females who breed' - women don't spontaneously pop out offspring! Both parties should be taxed if you're going down that route.
I'd also like to add that despite coming from a "broken home" I am a very normal person, in my first year at university and I plan to contribute my fair share to society after I've graduated.