HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
香港立法局
19 July 1989
·九八九年七月十九日
45
that couples would not be required to pay more tax, as a family unit than would two single individuals with the same income. At the beginning, the Administration was not sympathetic to this view at all. When pressed, in 1983, the then Financial Secretary made some peripheral adjustments to the tax liability which allowed the married women to be responsible for the portion of tax levied on her income, but the joint assessment system on the aggregated salaries of the couple remained. The debate continued. As time goes by, more and more tax administrations adopted separate assessment for married couples. By 1987, there was virtually unanimous support among OMELCO Members for separate taxation. In his 1988-89 Budget speech, the Financial Secretary introduced a working wife allowance of up to $15,000 and indicated that he would consider further how separate taxation for working wives might best be introduced. While the working wife allowance was welcomed as an interim measure, many Members, including myself, were looking for a firm commitment on the implementation of separate taxation, because while the benefit is important, the principle of equitable treatment for the married women is equally important. We were therefore very pleased when the Financial Secretary in his reply gave a firm commitment with 1990 as the target date for implementation. The long drawn out debate of a decade finally comes to an
end.
Sir, the Inland Revenue (Amendment) (No. 3) Bill 1989 is a complicated piece of legislation, as the Financial Secretary rightly predicted in 1988. However, I would rather pay the price of a slightly more complex tax system in order to remove the historical vestige that a wife is not a legal person separated from the husband and to uphold the principle of equity, privacy and independence for the working wife. I do not believe that a working wife allowance is sufficient to enable married women to exercise independent control of their taxation affairs, if they so wish; nor is it fair for their spouse to be landed with their tax bill.
While I appreciate that the Hong Kong Government will lose significant revenue if this Bill is passed into law, one should remind oneself who the beneficiaries of this legislation will be. They belong to the middle income group whose joint annual earning ranges from $170,000 to $330,000. These people are mainly young professionals and middle management. They are the sandwich class, who are often overlooked in our social and tax policies. It is only fair that they should also benefit occasionally. Furthermore, separate taxation will also serve to encourage married women to join our work force, and in turn, help to alleviate the labour shortage problem.