NP
3
4
5
6
7
NP 8
9
10
11
12
13
So far as taxation of married women is concerned, my long-standing support
for the principle of separate taxation owes nothing to my recent change
of status. It is indefensible that the law should force a wife to disclose
her income to her husband and force that husband to pay tax on his wife's separate income. But it seems to me equally indefensible that the family in which the wife receives a salary should now receive a special tax advantage, but not the family where the wife stays home to work without
pay.
TH
Housewives are working wives. they are not paid a salary for the work they do, but running a home, looking after children and old or
A tax handicapped relatives is at least as valuable to the community. allowance for a particular group of working wives merely replaces one anomaly with another and puts the family in which the wife works at home at a disadvantage As can be seen in the tables at Appendix F to
Lop 14 the budget speech. If this proposal goes through, it will not be long
15
16
17
before such families are advised by their tax consultants to register
as a business and pay the wife a salary in future.
Nf 18 [Let
240
19
20
22
2 2 2
23
25
iP 26
more
he
cap
Let me now leave the tax concessions in this Budget and turn now to the medium range forecast. I must say that I have some sympathy with the Financial Secretary. With a reported surplus of over $10 billion for
21 the current yeary
and another $7.3 billion expected next year, he would find it very difficult to convince the public that he could not afford to reduce taxation. Nevertheless, as he himself acknowledges, he is
in fact taking a gamble. The economic outlook is, as usual, or perhaps rather than usual, uncertain. The only certainty is inflation, which has been accelerating through 1987 and will continue to rise in 1988. The Exp 27 medium range forecast is a praiseworthy attempt to shorten the odds.
The most important assumptions in it are that the GDP will continue to 07
5.5 grow by an average of, per cent in real terms over the next four years, 30 which seems to me a fair assumption, and that inflation will also average 315.5 per cent, which seems a bit more doubtful. I take no comfort from the
Financial Secretary's remark that inflation remains fairly moderate by historical standards. It may seem so judged against the recent pasty 34 but that is only because the 1978 Budget generated such overheating in @ 35 the economy that we had four years of double digit inflation peaking at 36 over 15 per cent in both 1980 and 1981. Surely the comparisons that are
28
29
32
33