Tax Breaks for Married Couples - Good, Bad or just Ugly?

Our government taxes a variety of things, food, drink, roads, and even our deaths. The revenue generated from this (in my simple, non-expert understanding), goes to support the running of the country, by providing the us with the “things we need”, such as the NHS, emergency services, etc.

I also appreciate that some people ahould be allowed a break in paying said taxes - the forces when on deployment,single parents who are in work but struggling with childcare costs, government officials who genuinely pay for things out of their own pocket that they need to do their job; people that deserve it.

But do married people fall within this category? Shadow foreign secretary William Haguedefends this proposal by saying that it “has got to be right to support families and supporting marriage is part of that”. However, Ed Ball, the Schools Secretary, says it is “unfair ….. and it amounts social engineering.

I can see both sides of this argument, but fundamentally, I believe in the institute of marriage, and anything that would encourage families to stay together and work out their differences, can only be a good move in my mind.

A tax break is a tax saving. This includes:

• Tax exemption, an exemption from all or certain taxes of a state or nation in which part of the taxes that would normally be collected from an individual or an organization are instead foregone.
• Tax deduction, an expense incurred by a taxpayer that is subtracted from gross income and results in a lower overall taxable income,
• Tax credit, more valuable than an equivalent tax deduction because a tax credit reduces tax dollar-for-dollar, while a deduction only removes a percentage of the tax that is owed.