Transferring Personal Income Tax Allowance whether married or not

Proposer
PaulJRobinson
State

Accepted

Vote Score

2

Age

3662 days


@PaulJRobinson edited manifesto/society.md - about 10 years ago

Nominations for State Honours should continue to be encouraged from the public. These nominations should be shortlisted by a Committee appointed from within an elected Upper Chamber of Parliament. A nationwide public online vote should then decide on the final award of Honours on the basis of a redacted nomination paper to remove identifying information and prevent cronyism.

Marriage

The state should not seek to incentivise marriage through the tax system. But it should recognise family household units whether married or unmarried. It is therefore proposed that one adult's unused personal income tax allowance may be transferred in its entirety to another working adult residing in the same household.

[^1]: British Social Attitudes Survey (pdf)

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

This pull request has been automatically generated by prose.io.

frankieroberto

@frankieroberto - about 10 years ago

Agree in principle.

Would this only apply to couples – or could a group of 5 adults living in the same household transfer all of their personal tax allowance to one person?

Floppy

@Floppy - about 10 years ago

I was thinking about this on the train. If you did it by registrations on the electoral roll, would it encourage voter registration as well? Would sharing between all adults in a household would work OK?

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

This did occur to me. I thought of saying it should be restricted to those households with children, but why should childless couples be excluded? I think it should be kept to only one transfer (in full) per household, regardless of marriage/civil partnership/unmarried/children/childless.

On 20 March 2014 11:23, Frankie Roberto [email protected] wrote:

Agree in principle.

Would this only apply to couples - or could a group of 5 adults living in the same household transfer all of their personal tax allowance to one person?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/123#issuecomment-38156219 .

Floppy

@Floppy - about 10 years ago

So... each person in the household could nominate one person to receive their allowance, but only a person could only receive one other person's? In theory, if you had two pairs of people in the same household, could they both share their allowances, or is it just one transfer per household?

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

I think it should be just one per household. Otherwise there's a huge financial incentive to keep grouping more and more people into one residence!

with kind regards, Paul Robinson

about.me/pauljrobinson

On 20 March 2014 11:57, James Smith [email protected] wrote:

So... each person in the household could nominate one person to receive their allowance, but only a person could only receive one other person's? In theory, if you had two pairs of people in the same household, could they both share their allowances, or is it just one transfer per household?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/123#issuecomment-38158548 .

frankieroberto

@frankieroberto - about 10 years ago

I'd suggest just using the phrase 'common law spouses', which seems to already be in use for some benefits, e.g. Jobseekers Allowance (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-lawmarriage#Englandand_Wales).

Floppy

@Floppy - about 10 years ago

Interestingly that refers to heterosexual couples only; the Jobseekers Act refers to a man and a woman. We wouldn't want to end up with accidental exclusion, so if we did use it, we should explicitly point out that homosexual couples would be included as well?

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

That was why I deliberately referenced 'couples' without any other caveat.

with kind regards, Paul Robinson

about.me/pauljrobinson

On 20 March 2014 13:04, James Smith [email protected] wrote:

Interestingly that refers to heterosexual couples only; the Jobseekers Act refers to a man and a woman. We wouldn't want to end up with accidental exclusion, so if we did use it, we should explicitly point out that homosexual couples would be included as well?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/123#issuecomment-38163799 .

frankieroberto

@frankieroberto - about 10 years ago

I think the PR needs to reference couples to avoid odd multiple-people scenarios.

Perhaps this should also be applicable to no cohabiting couples too (e.g. two separated parents sharing custody where only one is in work)?

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

nice idea!

On 20 March 2014 13:49, Frankie Roberto [email protected] wrote:

I think the PR needs to reference couples to avoid odd multiple-people scenarios.

Perhaps this should also be applicable to no cohabiting couples too (e.g. two separated parents sharing custody where only one is in work)?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/123#issuecomment-38168281 .

philipjohn

@philipjohn - about 10 years ago

Yayyyy! 👍

Going by the comments so far, would this not allow a family of, say, 6 (e.g. mother, father and 4 offspring) all of working age to club together to avoid any tax?

What's the actual aim of the policy and does applying it to any couple achieve that aim, or just deny the treasury income it would otherwise get?

Floppy

@Floppy - about 10 years ago

@PaulJRobinson I think this is very close to going in - if you can make some tweaks to take into account the comments, I think we're onto a winner.

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

@philipjohn yes that's why I think you'd make it only one per household otherwise you could have one earner on £60k with 5 adult non earners and the whole household pays zero income tax. I think it should only be for couples, and only one couple per household.

Purpose would be to encourage one half of couple to stay at home and a) look after children or b) start up a business that may not earn them a salary for some time, but whilst they're not earning a salary they can give their allowance to other earner.

So the policy is to help parents and entrepreneurs.

Declaration of interest: I'm in the b) box right now! On 20 Mar 2014 19:37, "philipjohn" [email protected] wrote:

Yayyyy! [image: 👍]

Going by the comments so far, would this not allow a family of, say, 6 (e.g. mother, father and 4 offspring) all of working age to club together to avoid any tax?

What's the actual aim of the policy and does applying it to any couple achieve that aim, or just deny the treasury income it would otherwise get?

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/openpolitics/manifesto/pull/123#issuecomment-38211610 .

@PaulJRobinson edited manifesto/society.md - about 10 years ago

Nominations for State Honours should continue to be encouraged from the public. These nominations should be shortlisted by a Committee appointed from within an elected Upper Chamber of Parliament. A nationwide public online vote should then decide on the final award of Honours on the basis of a redacted nomination paper to remove identifying information and prevent cronyism.

Marriage

The state should not seek to incentivise marriage through the tax system. But it should recognise family household units whether married, unmarried or in a civil partnership. It is therefore proposed that a non-working adult's personal income tax allowance may be transferred in full to another working adult residing in the same household. It may only per transferred once per household.

PaulJRobinson

@PaulJRobinson - about 10 years ago

I think a minor change was required to reflect the discussion above. Happy to amend further though if people think it's necessary.

Floppy

@Floppy - about 10 years ago

Last sentence might be better as "Only one transfer would be allowed per household."

@PaulJRobinson edited manifesto/society.md - about 10 years ago

Nominations for State Honours should continue to be encouraged from the public. These nominations should be shortlisted by a Committee appointed from within an elected Upper Chamber of Parliament. A nationwide public online vote should then decide on the final award of Honours on the basis of a redacted nomination paper to remove identifying information and prevent cronyism.

Marriage

The state should not seek to incentivise marriage through the tax system. But it should recognise family household units whether married, unmarried or in a civil partnership. It is therefore proposed that a non-working adult's personal income tax allowance may be transferred in full to another working adult residing in the same household. Only one transfer would be allowed per household.

philipjohn

@philipjohn - about 10 years ago

I'm in the B position too ;)

👍