Hurrah for HMRC

[TundraDweller]

A phrase I never thought I would write...

I was delighted to see such clear and simple wording on this form:

Well yeah. The taxman don't give a shite what your inner essence is. Just hand over the dosh.

Ah but is this gender or biological sex? Not that it matters one jot for tax purposes but it can blur the lines when it comes to reporting data.

What's that sound? Gnashing of teeth followed by TRAs inundating HMRC with complaints closely followed by Stonewall/Mermaids indoctrination training.

I've never seen 'sex' used in place of 'social gender presentation'. Sex only means biological sex.

My uni asked for gender but only gave male or female.

Is this because tax (and related) legislation only has distinctions based on sex? I was thinking particularly on NI and retirement age.

I've just found this on the gov.uk:

www.gov.uk/state-pension-age

It says: Your State Pension age is worked out based on your gender and date of birth.

Then when you use the tool it asks for DOB and then the question Are you a man or a woman? and there is a binary option of two buttons to click.

Because you don’t like seeing boxes you don’t have to tick?

I think HMRC have a grasp of the law, and are not collecting data they don't need.

Is this because tax (and related) legislation only has distinctions based on sex? I was thinking particularly on NI and retirement age.

Presumably. Most of the time sex doesn't make a difference to how much tax you pay, but it does still affect when you stop paying NI.

HMRC starter checklist had late amendments before the new tax year 2019/20. The part 're sex was changed from gender - male/female to how it is now.

This was changed I think at the same time as amendments were made for paying back
post graduate loans. I wish I had kept a copy to show but didn't.

I think the reason for keeping the sex question is more likely to be around statutory payments, as the pension ages are now equalised.

How is that good? The MtF transpeople will all be selecting "female" and the FtM (few in number though they be) will select "male".

As for the non-binary/gender queers, they'll be taking out a class action against HMRC.