Breaking News: £1000 married tax allowance

chewmylegoff

lvader wrote: »

This is a common tax policy is the rest of Europe, it partially makes up for the fact that it is more tax advantagous to divorce than to marry. It will help many retired couples where one person has most of the pension income.

It doesn't really do that though does it. It provides a very small tax advantage to only to specific types of couple, where one party is a basic rate tax payer and the other has earnings less than the personal allowance. I wouldn't be surprised if a large proportion of the people it "helps" are pensioner couples who aren't particularly likely to get divorced anytime soon. Even then the tax break is so small that it is basically irrelevant. Seems to me that it is just a waste of money as it will have little impact on the people who receive it.

lvader

It should be seen as a starting point. Eventually it should apply to the whole of the personal allowance like it does in other countries.

Loughton_Monkey

Ronaldo_Mconaldo wrote: »

Are you for real?

No.

I am a mere figment of someone's warped imagination. I exist only on Mars, and my views are generally transmogrifications from alien vulcan zombies now living on Jupiter.

I am a boomer and don't live in the real world.

TheSaint_2

Unfortunately, this will apply to pensioners more than the younger. We need to revert to the pre 2000 system where the whole tax free allowance could be transferred. This would benefit families where one parent wishes to stay at home and raise the kids.

It is widely understood that one parent at home makes for better educated better integrated adults once the grow up. This is a policy that looks to safeguard a future generation of taxpayers.

I do think it needs tweaking to only apply where children are in the family though.

To all the manners shouting its not fair - we need to encourage stability, you had parents too once. I think £1000 transfer won't have any impact though.

Old_Slaphead

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong, but I am convinced that back in the 70's, a married couple could transfer the whole tax free allowance between them. But it may have been just a generous "Married Couples Allowance" that was given to both, but could be transferred.

?

You are correct

In the early 70s there was a married person allowance of £340 and a single person allowance of £220 and the single allowance was transferable in whole or in part.

chewmylegoff

TheSaint wrote: »

Unfortunately, this will apply to pensioners more than the younger. We need to revert to the pre 2000 system where the whole tax free allowance could be transferred. This would benefit families where one parent wishes to stay at home and raise the kids.

It is widely understood that one parent at home makes for better educated better integrated adults once the grow up. This is a policy that looks to safeguard a future generation of taxpayers.

I do think it needs tweaking to only apply where children are in the family though.

To all the manners shouting its not fair - we need to encourage stability, you had parents too once. I think £1000 transfer won't have any impact though.

If the aim is for one parent in a couple where the highest earner only pays basic rate tax to be able to stay at home and look after the kids instead of going out to work then £200 a year isn't really going to cut it.

daveyjp

Yet more complication to our already thousands of pages tax code. I thought the Tories were about reducing red tape.

In the case of tax its another case of make it complicated then no one will claim it, Treasury is then happy.

TruckerT

Jennifer_Jane wrote: »

Marriage is generally a good thing. It's that little piece of paper which means that families grow up within a legal framework. Statistics show that families are stronger within marriage (apparently - I have no research).

Anything that protects women and children, I am for. If this encourages people to marry, then so be it.

The clear implication of Mr Cameron's tax break deal is that he believes that 'traditional family values' are a good thing, and play an important part in maintaining a stable society.

But only a month or three ago, the same Mr Cameron went to inordinate lengths to extend the possibility of 'marriage' to same-sex couples.

Marriage is surely the ultimate traditional family value! It will take many 'generations' before a same-sex marriage will be able to claim to represent a traditional family value.

Unfortunately, the 'generations' concerned can only be 'generated' by traditional opposite-sex marriages.

markharding557 wrote: »

The fact of being married means you are financially linked.
You are legally each others spouse and have the legal rights that this entails.

You must divorce to change that, this can be cheap if done amicably.

In practice, there is no financial link at all. We are treated as single people in all our dealings with HMRC, DWP, and council housing benefit departments. We have no responsibility for each others debts (of which there are none!), and if either of us were to be turned down for any kind of contract because of the other's credit history, then there would be serious cause for complaint. It would be unreasonable for either of us claim any kind of financial 'rights 'as a result of being technically still married.

Incidentally, some of the traditional grounds for divorce used to be 'adultery' and 'non-consummation'. But these definitions make no sense at all in anything but a heterosexual context. How will same-sex divorces deal with the infidelity, or the impotence/frigidity, issue?

And how can a male MP be charged with 'raping' another male? My dictionary defines rape as forced sexual intercourse, and I can't see how anal penetration can be classed as sexual intercourse.

TruckerT

LydiaJ

TruckerT wrote: »

Incidentally, some of the traditional grounds for divorce used to be 'adultery' and 'non-consummation'. But these definitions make no sense at all in anything but a heterosexual context. How will same-sex divorces deal with the infidelity, or the impotence/frigidity, issue?

And how can a male MP be charged with 'raping' another male? My dictionary defines rape as forced sexual intercourse, and I can't see how anal penetration can be classed as sexual intercourse.

Adultery as a grounds for divorce and non-consummation as a grounds for annulment are being abolished, I think. At least, I'm sure I read that was what would have to happen if the bill went through, so I imagine that they have been, or are being, now that it has. People whose spouses do these things will be able to divorce by citing them as "unreasonable behaviour", which is an abbreviation for "behaviour that would make it unreasonable to expect the other spouse to continue living with the person behaving that way".

Likewise, the type of crime you describe is, I think, legally defined by the catch-all term of "indecent assault", although media reporting things don't always use legally accurate terms, do they? Otherwise we wouldn't have all these headlines about a bedroom tax.

If anyone with proper legal knowledge wants to correct me, please do. I am only basing what I say on what I've read and heard, and make no guarantees that it's accurate.

zagfles

woodbine wrote: »

a bribe pure and simple,cameron says it will start in april 2015,i suspect that the liberals will have something to say about that
another tory policy produced on the back of a fag packet at a party conference,will they never learn?

Err...it was in the coalition agreement in 2010. It's not something just dreamed up, like Ed's energy "price freeze".

The LibDems don't like it but it's in the coalition agreement that they'll abstain, which would enable the Tories to get it through.