Yes this. And the same with tax free childcare/ 30 hours childcare/ withdrawal of the personal allowance at £100k. This can result in an effective tax rate of 85% if you have a couple of children, which is ridiculous! Yet a couple can earn £199k before they have to deal with this.
Rachel - if you are serious at all about fairness, women's rights or child poverty, you will commit to stop charging single adult households more tax on the same household income i.e. make all tax and benefit thresholds per household. For two adult households, their allowance can be split equally between them by default and they can opt-in for a different split by mutual consent if they wish. That way women in couples keep their autonomy, but not at expense of single women being penalised financially.
There is no logical reason to penalise single adult households through the tax system. In the case of single parent households, their costs are obviously higher as they have to do, or pay for, all earning and childcare in only 24 hours per day. So why are they charged more? It makes zero sense.
90% of single parent households are run by women, so it is blatant sex discrimination as well. This is meant to be assessed when making policy, but is always ignored. And obviously it's no surprise that a lot of child poverty is in single parent households when they are being penalised like this at all levels of the tax system: half the tax-free allowance, half the earnings before higher rate tax, half the earnings before withdrawing child benefit, half the earnings before withdrawing the personal allowance etc.
So, will you commit to rectifying this if you take office?
(You should obviously also abolish the withdrawal of the personal allowance for everyone regardless as well. What kind of tax system goes 0%, 20%, 40%, 60% then 45%? How is that justifiable please? And will you fix it?)
Several posters on the thread have now agreed that they'd like the child benefit issue addressed. The same inequity applies throughout the tax system though as stated above. It's exactly the same issue with the tax-free allowance, the tax thresholds, the threshold for withdrawing the personal allowance and tax free childcare and 30 hours childcare: all applied to single adult households at half the household income that two adult households can earn before they apply. This is hugely discriminatory to women and children given that over 90% of single parent households are led by women. And that with only one adult to do everything their costs will be higher, so why then taxed more on top, compounding the disasvantage?
It would make no sense to address the child benefit issue and not the tax thresholds and childcare thresholds as well. Mumsnet please do ask this question: it's directly related to women and children and Mumsnet's purpose, and to Rachel's brief so entirely within her gift to end this discrimination immediately if she becomes chancellor.
There is no way it can be justified. Please Rachel, will you commit to rectifying it as soon as you take office? It is a simple and immediate step that is actually entirely within Government control and a complete no-brainer in terms of fairness and addressing inbuilt disadvantage.