§ Mr. RiddickTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what would be the estimated cost to the Treasury in a full year of making the married woman's tax allowance transferable to(a) working husbands and (b) nonworking husbands; and what is his policy on making such a move.
§ Mr. RyderThe cost would be a little over £3 billion; some 95 per cent. would result from married women transferring unused personal allowance to husbands in paid employment. These estimates are based on a projection of the 1987–88 survey of personal incomes and are, therefore, provisional.
An arrangement of this kind would have some similarity to the system of fully transferable allowances for married couples described in the 1986 Green Paper "The Reform of Personal Taxation". In the light of the response to the Green Paper the Government decided not to go ahead with that proposal, but to introduce the present system of independent taxation incorporating the transferable married couple's allowance.