Following recent tax changes, a mother of one with a part-time job bringing in £5,000 a year would be £7,295 a year worse off if the child’s father lived with them, an increase of £70 in the notional penalty, according to the Marriage Foundation think-tank.
This is the problem with trying to help single people more than couples ... it creates an incentive for people not to live together ... or to say that they don't.
In reality, suggests the Foundation, around a quarter of a million couples simply pretend to live apart to avoid losing thousands of pounds in state support.
That's a lot of fraud - caused by the government's perverse incentives.
You can understand the state's wish to help the disadvantaged. But that creates an incentive for people to claim that they're disadvantaged in order to claim more money.
Maybe the margin of benefits between single people and couples has to be reduced.
Source
This is the problem with trying to help single people more than couples ... it creates an incentive for people not to live together ... or to say that they don't.
In reality, suggests the Foundation, around a quarter of a million couples simply pretend to live apart to avoid losing thousands of pounds in state support.
That's a lot of fraud - caused by the government's perverse incentives.
You can understand the state's wish to help the disadvantaged. But that creates an incentive for people to claim that they're disadvantaged in order to claim more money.
Maybe the margin of benefits between single people and couples has to be reduced.
Source