Sir, - There are many arguments against individualisation of the tax code, but the best of them is not, as Maeve-Ann Wren would have it (November 28th), that the extent to which dual-income couples benefit from it does not take into account whether they have children who are cared for in the home. The main argument against it is that it withdraws recognition from marriage itself.
Before individualisation, our tax code recognised that a married couple had joined themselves together into a single unit in their economic relationship to the rest of the world. It recognised that income earned by either spouse was earned equally by both.
It is only bizarre that we should be beginning to wonder how the State might begin to go about recognising the economic value of the work done (largely by women) in the home. Until the last budget, we had such a system: work done in the home was valued equally with work done outside it. It is no longer. - Yours, etc.,
William Hunt, Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W.