Tories mull tax break for married couples

Tories mull tax break for married couples

Married couples could receive a £20-a-week tax break under new plans being considered by the Conservatives today.

David Cameron is being urged to rejig the tax system in favour of married couples, as part of a package of nearly 200 measures to halt family breakdown.

The recommendation comes from the Conservative party's social justice policy review, and represents the first major policy crossroads for the leader.

The 670-page report also calls for steep hikes in alcohol taxes and a rise in the gambling age to help prevent binge drinking and addiction.

None of the findings are binding on Mr Cameron, who will respond this afternoon.

But in a sign of the potential pitfalls ahead, many of the recommendations have already been criticised as an attack on lone parent families by charities, and by the government.

The report, by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, calls for an overhaul of the tax system to recognise the "benefits which marriage brings to society".

Under it married couples would get a tax and benefits boost potentially worth thousands of pounds a year, as spouses would be allowed to transfer any unused tax allowances to their partner.

The report says such a move is aimed at helping single-earner couples where one parent stayed at home with young children.

As well as the transferable allowance, which the group said would be worth £20 a week to one-earner households, it suggests increasing.....continued below

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couples' allowances through working tax credits.

This could give up to 1.8 million couples an additional £32 a week.

Under the proposals, set out in a bumper Breakthrough Britain report, disincentives for couples to stay together would also be removed from the benefits system.

Such is the new Tory emphasis on society and poverty that the party is explaining its proposals in detail over six sessions and two days.

The report also tackles educational underachievement and crime, and posits the cost of societal breakdown at £102bn.

Other measures include:

· "Front-loading" child benefit to give parents greater financial freedom to look after their children in their first three years.

·Lone parents required to work full time once their children reached the age of 11 to get more people off benefits and into work. · Increasing the scope of credit unions providing low-interest loans to low-income families in an attempt to save them from loan sharks. · Making volunteering part of the school curriculum and rewarding youngsters who undertake community work with tickets for pop concerts.

· Raising the gambling age limit from 16 to 18 and requiring the gaming industry to spend more than £10m a year on research into anti-addiction programmes.

· A £400m tax on alcohol to double the amount spent on drink and drugs treatment.

· Charities and parents to be allowed to set up new "pioneer schools", set up as charities, free of local authority control, and able to recruit staff and set pay levels.

The 18-months of research which went into the report is one of six policy reviews commissioned by Mr Cameron when he became leader in December 2005.