Balls says scrap Marriage Tax Allowance to fund tax cut for working people

In a pre-budget interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Ed Balls has said that Osborne should use next week’s budget to scrap he Marriage Tax allowance to fund a tax cut for working people. Specifically, Balls suggests that the money could be used to pay for a lower 10p starting rate of income tax which would help not only married couples, but also more women and more families with children than the Marriage Tax Allowance. The Shadow Chancellor told Robinson:

any tax cut for families on middle and low incomes is better than none. What did [Osborne] actually announce last year, he said that he would introduce a married couples allowance which, when you look at the detail, only goes to a third of married couples, and one in six families with children, it goes mainly to men. We think what we should actually do is scrap the married couples allowance which is perverse and unfair, and use that money to give a tax cut for all middle and lower income families. We propose a new 10p starting rate of income tax, it’s better than the personal allowance, because it’s better for work incentives, it would help two-thirds of married couples, it would help women as well as men, families with children. Let’s cut taxes for working families, and let’s ease this cost-of-living crisis rather than carrying on pandering to Tory backbenchers with tax cuts that are unfair and don’t make sense.

Of course Osborne will have no intention of scrapping the Marriage Tax Allowance – great lengths have been gone to within the coalition to get this agreed, and his backbenchers would revolt if he dropped it. However Balls has clearly seen an opportunity to point out another way in which Osborne is funnelling tax breaks towards a small section of society for narrow ideological reasons, when that same money could be spent elsewhere…