On Radio 4's Today programme Tim Farron confirmed that his party would "get rid of the married couple's tax allowance".
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They've already called for the 48% so they won't be losing many more pensioner votes anyway.
What's the point of getting rid of it ?
It'll naturally die out anyway.
It'd be interesting to know how many couples were claiming it. And how many using it in its entirety.
I rather think Tim was actually talking about Cameron's idiotic transferable "marriage allowance" rather than the vestigial allowance for those born before 1935... An enormous amount of work for HMRC to devise the rules, accountants in applying it, and just proving that you should never let a politician interfere with a tax system...
I also think he meant the "marriage allowance" but you cannot really expect a politician to know things like that!
Almost as bad as the hurriedly introduced Child Benefit nonsense which I believe was a Lib Dem influenced policy, that has caused unbelievable problems for many people.
There are easier and more equitable ways to do things like this.
You're missing the point, which is to make something that sounds good as a soundbite when they toss it out in an interview but without changing anything fundamental and, in the case of marriage allowance, making it awkward enough that half the people entitled to it won't claim.
That's why you can have them saying things like "we're giving £220 a year to married couples" or "we're cutting all benefits from high wage earners" and the public can get behind it and the tiny fraction of 1% of people who have to deal with the administrative headache of it have no voice because nobody knows or cares that it's badly implemented.