Update: Check out this great post at The Standard which actually quantifies how many families will count, and how many won't (hint: the latter is larger than the former), under Dunne's proposal.
Tuesday, 17 August 2010
Income splitting for sole parents not so hunky dory
Emmerson in this morning's Herald points out that income splitting won't help sole parents at all:
Anna wrote a post about income splitting, point out its shortcomings as a policy solution, back in 2008, and Anjum wrote about it again earlier this year, specifically making the argument about the discrimination against sole parents.
Update: Check out this great post at The Standard which actually quantifies how many families will count, and how many won't (hint: the latter is larger than the former), under Dunne's proposal.
Update: Check out this great post at The Standard which actually quantifies how many families will count, and how many won't (hint: the latter is larger than the former), under Dunne's proposal.
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5 comments:
Well done I say United Future. This policy seems great. I have been looking forward to a politician raising this idea for years. I'm not sure, but I have heard it was first proposed by a sociology or tax think tank from Massey Uni in the 80's but was discarded then by that government. I'm not convinced it's needed for those families with kids older than 5 years old (however we can't underestimate the vital voluntary contribution of parents to school community life these days). When all the kids are over 5yrs old they should be in formal education and policies should encourage parents to find part-time work within school hours. I like this idea in that it encourages family life, the traditional family unit and goes back to basic family values while giving real value to the role of the parent at home (most commonly, respect for the role of a mother) with the pre-school child during a vitally important time in their development
(most commonly, respect for the role of a mother)
except that this policy shows no respect to the role of a mother unless she is attached to a high earning man & refuses to earn any substantial income of her own. all others mothers are treated as worthless by this policy, and the children of these mothers get to miss out as well.
stargazer, you could have included the words " most commonly". That would have, perhaps, dissuaded you banging on about gender stereotypes that it is always a mother that is attached to a high earning man, and the woman that is on the dpb when often it is the reverse.
i just followed the language and underlying bias in colin's comment.
but basically, you agree that the policy is highly unfair to a very large number of people, you just want to have a little whine about how some men are going to be disadvantaged unfairly as well. fair enough.
and this policy doesn't just discriminate sole-parents on the DPB, it discriminates all sole-parents - there are a whole lot who are in work as well. they don't reserve any respect for the work they do in bringing up children according to this policy.
it also discriminates against people who aren't in the situation where one partner earns a whole lot and the other partner earns next to nothing. it says that if one of you can't earn a high income (and it would have to be well over the average wage), then your family unit doesn't fit what we consider to be the traditional family unit & is therefore not worth supporting.
It also discriminates further than you appear to realise - a couple where the breadwinner earns 120k and his pregnant non-earning partner has their first child gets MORE in tax relief than a one income family on 30k in the next hospital bed having their first child gets in tax relief and WFF COMBINED.
In other words: further inequality. Imagine if WFF was pulled after income splitting!
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