KEY POINTS:
For quite a few years I worked alongside someone whose circumstances were almost identical to mine: married, two children at similar ages, a manageable mortgage. Our main difference was that my home had two incomes and his had one.
This seemed to make quite a difference. Expenses that I barely noticed bothered him.
He didn't mind that his wife wasn't earning, he loved the mother she was and the home she made and the voluntary work she did in their locality. But he thought the tax system could at least recognise that he was earning for two.
I agreed and still do. A couple living on one decent salary and a low, or non-existent, second wage, would lose less in tax if each was assessed on half their combined earnings.
"Income splitting" is one of those good ideas that governments resist for reasons that make no sense to me.
The reasons were rehearsed again this week when Inland Revenue finally produced the discussion paper on income splitting that Peter Dunne was promised when he gave his votes to Labour after the last election.
Helen Clark dismissed the idea as a benefit for the better off. But it has in-built limits.
Income splitting is obviously of no use to couples who both earn in Labour's top tax bracket which starts at the now modest income of $60,000 a year, or if their combined income exceeds twice that figure.
It is of most value to couples with joint earnings approaching $120,000, who would reduce their tax by $9000.
At incomes beneath that the benefit declines, which is why Labour doesn't like it. Yet a family living on just $60,000 would be left with an additional $3000 a year, which seems worthwhile to me.
The document Dunne has issued jointly with Michael Cullen is the most grudging, token, unduly confusing treatment of the subject imaginable.
It invites public comment only on the question: "Is income splitting the best way to provide additional government support for families with children?"
Every country that permits it - France, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Ireland, the United States - allows it for all couples because it is a matter of principle not just child support and not social welfare in the narrow redistributive sense.
If it is still considered a fairly good thing that children might spend their early years at home with a parent, and later, find a parent at home when they come in from school, or fall ill, why does our taxation not recognise that?
Many will suspect this Government does not think it a good thing that a parent, usually the mother, might choose to forego employment.
But income splitting would not favour that choice over the other; couples who both work will still be much better off.
Income splitting would simply recognise marriage for taxation in the same way that the partnership is recognised for welfare payments, national superannuation and property divisions.
Strange that a Government which has extended the principle of equality in matrimonial property to apply to de facto partnerships of all sorts should be reluctant to acknowledge equal claims on a shared income when it comes to taxation.
Strange, too, that it can see no benefit for sole parents and others on single incomes. The reason my former colleague noticed the difference in our circumstances is that ordinary household living standards today are based on two incomes.
Social science has not said very much about this consequence of the female migration to paid careers. The average two-parent family has been a great deal better off since the 1970s than it was previously.
Two can live much cheaper than one and when both are earning they can afford to eat out frequently, take overseas trips, buy health insurance, childcare, private education and the like.
If tax policy was to treat a shared single income fairly, the consequences might be equally far-reaching.
The general living standard might be re-oriented towards a level more affordable on a single average income, and that would help sole parents as well.
That seems better social policy than the demeaning income supplements which serve only to maintain social dependency.
These wretched "family support" systems have no difficulty assessing the joint incomes, yet when it suggested couples be given the tax advantage of their shared earnings, experts mutter that income splitting is hard to administer.
It is hard to see why. For households living on one income the splitting could occur as the money is earned simply by introducing a married rate of taxation.
For households with two incomes it could be done, as the discussion paper admits, with an end of year tax return.
