THE REFORM OF THE INCOME TAX.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECUTOR."]
Ste,—With reference to the above, your correspondent points out that if married people were taxed separately one married household would be unfairly taxed compared with iiiather; but the question is, as Mr. Chamberlain admitted last week, one of injustice between married people and unmarried people. If the Brown household quoted by your correspondent con- sisted of any two unmarried people, sisters or others, with £130 a year each, they also would escape the Income Tax altogether, while the Jones household continued to pay £12 18a. 9d. on the single income of £260. In fact, these instances prove too much not that the "marriage penalty " is fair, but that it is not fair that some wives should have private incomes and others none—a fact as wide as the distri- bution of wealth itself, and therefore beyond the control of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now that the tax is steeply graduated the discrepancy between the assessment of combined incomes and single incomes is greatly increased, as you pointed out in your issue of April 5th; the effect is to make curious differences between the married and the unmarried household, as, for instance, a tax of £100 for the former on a joint income of £600 and only £54 for the latter on two separate incomes amounting to £600. It is natural that men and women should wish to be taxed on their own income and not on their partner's. The present arrangement does not conduce to thrift and saving among middle-class wives, as there is too great uncertainty as to the rate at which invested money will be
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