HONG KONG
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL 香港立法局———————————一九八九年七月十九日
19 July 1989
56
Department. However, in recognition that some husbands and wives may not be able fully to absorb their allowances and others may derive a greater benefit from a married person's allowance than from two single persons' allowances, joint assessment election is made available to them. To this extent, the option of combined assessment is provided.
Mr. Peter WONG has dismissed the need to extend separate taxation to married women because he considers that this will unduly complicate the salaries tax legislation. Instead, he has endorsed the Hong Kong Society of Accountants stance on the issue. The society has proposed that the "marriage tax" be redressed by increasing the existing working wife allowance. I have already explained why working wife allowance is not an acceptable solution on equity grounds. In addition, it should not be overlooked that the advocates of separate taxation have also based their representations on the need to provide women with independent recognition and privacy in their personal taxation affairs. Mrs. Rita FAN has alluded to the importance of this. Working wife allowance fails to redress these issues.
I can however give the assurance sought by Mr. WONG that the Commissioner of Inland Revenue will identify and issue the appropriate notification in every case where it will be to the advantage of the married couple to elect to be jointly assessed so that no married couple will become worse off under separate taxation.
Mrs. Nellie FONG and Mr. Andrew WONG have spoken against the Bill on the grounds that the working wife allowance or, as Mr. Andrew WONG described it, the working partner allowance is a satisfactory solution to the "marriage tax" problem and that separate taxation of married women is not justified, given the additional administrative costs, the additional tax burden on the majority of families, and the lack of clamour from married women for the right to maintain confidentiality about their income and taxation matters from their husbands. For the reasons I have already identified, a flat rate working wife allowance does not equitably resolve all taxpayers' "marriage taxes" and therefore the underlying inequity still remains. Working wife allowance has not benefitted either married couples where only one spouse works or husbands and wives individually chargeable at standard rates. Nor will separate taxation provide these two groups with any financial benefit. But the majority of all other married couples with both spouses working will receive a benefit from separate taxation. For those who do not, there was no "marriage tax" in the first instance and any benefit derived from the interim working wife allowance can
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