This tax break for married couples

[ISNT]

How are they going to do it then? How are they going to work out who qualifies and pay it to them? Who are they going to pay it to - will it be £75 for each person?

It can't be through PAYE as employers don't know marital status and not everyone is employed. I can't think what the mechanism will be to work it out. Obviously loads of people don't fill out tax returns.

Anyone?

huddspur it's not just for married parents though, it's for everyone who is married. So outcomes for children neither here nor there. It'll include all married couples including those with no children & people whose children have left home etc etc

Also being paid to civil partners who are less likely to have children.

It's just a prize for being a "good" traditional person and doing the "right" thing as defined by right-wing ideology.

And duelling I agree it's not much is it. So with one hand they take a universal benefit from all parents, saying universal benefits are no longer sustainable in this economic environment. OTOH they dish some back out universally, to everyone married, when being married in and itself does not lead to increased costs (like having children does). And it will cost an awful lot to administer and will be very much open to abuse I suspect.

All very very silly.

I can't see this going down well if it goes automatically to the man (rather than the woman)!

Does it extend to civil partnerships?

sorry..only read first page!!

If the government thinks that married couples have better less costly expenses, as citizens, then on the surface it's a great idea. But to penalised people that have escaped horrid relationships or haven't found/don't want a long term relationship then it's a bit tough. Personally I think if the government improved our society in other ways the family would come back all on it's own.

If you give something to any group of people there is always another group of people that aren't going to like it. Give a couples allowance and singles don't like it. Give single parents a reduction in their council tax and two-parent families don't like it. Give a child allowance and the childless protest. Give wealthy people some tax back because they don't live in the UK much and another set of people are annoyed. 'C'est la vie'.

Are couples more stable because they've chosen to get married or do are steady people more likely to get married than others anyway? Who knows? As I say, I don't think it really encourages or even rewards marriage... too small an amount of money.

But what's the point of introducing this ludicrous policy when they have just been banging on about how there's no money? It doesn't make any sense at all.

Yes, married people tend to be more stable than unmarried people (yes, I AM generalising here).
Marriage is nearly almost always entered into with the intention of staying together for life whereas cohabitation simply is not.
Cohabitation can range from a quick experiment that lasts a few months to lifelong commitment.
So it does seem reasonable to suggest that marriages are more likely to go the distance.
This is NOT to say that every marriage is deeply committed nor every cohabitation will fall by the wayside. So no flaming, please!

Nevertheless, this tax break is a daft idea because the amounts involved are simply too low to matter to even poorest couple.

Although I do raise my eyebrows that this is social engineering; sorry but the benefits system has been socially engineering for years- how daft is a system that encourages the break up of families by discriminating against families staying together?