For richer or poorer, tax breaks are fairer

The article by Philip Collins on these pages last week captured very well a sophisticated scepticism about my party’s pledge to recognise marriage in the tax system. However, it also revealed one of the flaws in Blairism — its blindness to institutions and how they matter.
For a start, he writes as if there is no recognition of marriage in benefits and taxes at the moment. But this isn’t correct. Most of the benefits system does not treat us as individuals but as couples and families. It saves money by fingering any adult, notably a spouse, who should take responsibility for you if you have no income. That is why people losing jobs in the recession are finding that if their spouse has even quite modest earnings they have no entitlement to benefits.
The tax system already recognises marriage as well. Only last year the Government changed inheritance tax, for example, to give specially favourable treatment to transfers of assets to a spouse. Some readers who were persuaded by Philip Collins’s article would have been up in arms if his arguments had been applied to property that they wanted to transfer to a spouse. In fact, these tax breaks may be one reason why most middle-class, middle-aged couples end up married even if they never expected to — it is how you protect your property for your partner.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article6719672.ece