In 1912, the Milwaukee Journal reported a story from England regarding a Mr. and Mrs. Wilkes.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=5JQWAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7CAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6049,712919&dq
Mrs. Wilkes was a suffragette who refused to pay her taxes. Under English law at the time, as under the Income Tax Act, the tax levied on a married woman’s income was liable to be paid by the husband. This was because, at the time of the income tax, married women had no independent income. Once married, her income was considered under the control of her husband. In 1870, this aspect of the law changed, with the introduction of the Married Women’s Property Act. Under this act, a married woman’s income was legally hers and hers alone.
Whether deliberately or by accident, Mrs Wilkes discovered the obvious consequence of the interplay between these two laws. If a married woman refused to pay the tax on her income, the husband was liable for the tax arising on it.
In this particular marriage, Mr Wilkes (as reported in the story) was a teacher. What it does not mention however is that Mrs Wilkes was a doctor. In fact, she was earning far in excess of her husband at the time.
The issue was compounded due to the fact that Mrs Wilkes was not legally obliged to reveal to Mr Wilkes what her income was; Mr Wilkes was unable to provide to the authorities information with which they could ascertain their claim. As such, they made an assessment without it. Regardless, on only a teachers wage, Mr Wilkes was unable to pay the tax. He was arrested, and sent to prison. Luckily, he was quietly released a short time later.
The harder issue was of course for the Parliament. On the 14th of October 1912, the matter was brought before Parliament to be addressed. Initially there was some confusion with how to address it. In a foretelling of the type of problem many jurisdictions face today, it was realised that this consequence was due to the interplay of two seperate statutes; indeed, it seems no one had realised that they could be abused in this fashion.
Whilst the problem may seem one that would be simple to solve (add a tax provision to either the Income Tax or the Married Women’s Property Act), the problems were indeed more complex, and pointed to a need for a complete re-imagining of the core tenets of the tax system – the taxing not of households (as it was under the old law) to the taxing of individuals.
Under the laws as they stood, for the purposes of income tax, the husband’s and wife’s respective incomes were added and considered as one person’s income (namely, the husband). This meant that the tax levied on married couples was levied at a higher rate (due to income tax brackets) than for co-habiting but unmarried couples.
And thus the problem was born – do we a) treat the incomes as separate but still add them together (dat coffer yo) or b) do we treat the incomes as completely separate in order to revert what was essentially a tax on marriage (and hence promoting “irregular couples” *gasp*), and forego the tax revenue.
Option (a) kept the sacred tax revenue, but was effectively an excess tax on married couples, option (b) would remove that tax, but would (unless further revisions of the tax system were completed) result in those poorer funding a higher percentage of the state. A pickle if ever there was one!
It seems that the issue of separate taxation was solved by 1914, however the money revenue question seems to have persisted for much longer.
For those interested, please see http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/acts/married-womens-property-act-1870
Pretty much every response during and after 1912, until at least 1919 (I stopped reading there, as the topic changed to beyond the scope of this post) is relevant.
If this was all you knew about feminism*, would you believe in it?
Does this event make all of feminism wrong?
*I should technically say the suffragettes, but seeing as feminists often like to proclaim they are only for the equal rights of women, and if you agree you are also a feminist, I believe that it is justifiable to include the suffragettes as feminists.
a history of feminist abuse 