Saying the unmarried are "punished" by Tory tax plans is just stupid - a bit like those tax plans

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The debate as to whether taxation’s purpose is to raise the money needed to deliver public services or to engineer social change is an important one. For the record I believe that the only moral purpose for taxation is to fund government services – any other reason for taxation is immoral.

However, the recent debate about the Conservative’s proposals on tax breaks for “marriage” has been marred by the persistent argument – used by Ed Balls, for example - that the proposals will “punish” unmarried parents.

This is nonsense – firstly taxation isn’t a zero-sum game. Your tax break doesn’t mean my tax rise. And “rewarding” you for some behaviour or other doesn’t “punish” me as I lose nothing. It may be the case that the tax break results in a revenue shortfall requiring either a tax increase or a spending reduction but this need not be a punishment.

And secondly the idea that rewards and punishments are balanced in some Manichaean deal is sloppy thinking, misleading and unhelpful. The marriage tax break proposals are wrong – just as the skewed support for single parents is wrong, just as so-called “green taxes” are wrong. But they are wrong on principle not because they reward, punish, prefer or discriminate.

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