Money Matters

The removal of child benefit for couples where at least one person is a high rate taxpayer has filled the news headlines for the past few weeks. It is not just the change from a universal benefit which causes comment, it is also how the removal of child credit will be implemented in a country where taxation is at the level of the individual and not at the level of the household. Gone are they days when I filled in a form from the Inland Revenue – name, address … – only to find a statement right at the end which said: ‘If you are married, please fill this in as if you were your husband.’ Commentators have noted that the woman receiving child benefit may have to tell her high tax-rate partner so that he can tick the box on his tax return, admitting to the household receiving child credit in order to have the benefit removed.

This is not a new problem. The path-breaking Married Women’s Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 gave married women the right to keep money they earned or inherited – but not to fill in their own tax returns. The head of household had to do that. So wives, as with child benefit, had to give their income details to their husbands. And not all of them were willing to do so.

In 1909, the burgeoning suffragette movement decided to use tax as a tool in the fight for votes. So they formed the Women’s Tax Resistance League with the slogan ‘No vote, no tax’. Many of the women involved were well off, either from inherited wealth or because they had successful careers. They resented the fact that they had to pay tax on their income but could not vote.

Elizabeth Wilkes, a doctor, refused on principle to disclose her earnings to her husband. When he failed to declare the household’s income, as he was legally required to do, he was sent to Brixton Gaol. Government ministers wondered whether to require married partners to disclose their income to their spouses. Worried that they might then have to disclose their own earnings to their wives, they decided against.

Some women who refused to pay income or council tax had their belongings seized despite barricading themselves into their homes. There were rallies and riots in the streets of towns and cities. The Women’s Tax Resistance League agreed a moratorium during World War I. Women householders over 30 were given the vote in 1918.