Equals? Not under this law

Unfortunately, at least one highly significant area of Island law has lagged severely behind cultural change. Income tax legislation means that husbands are formally responsible for their wives’ tax affairs.

Bizarrely, this an arrangement is mirrored in the new civil partnership law, which quite illogically requires the older partner to assume the same responsibilities as a husband.

It is possible for a married woman – or the ‘junior’ partner in a civil arrangement – to elect to be taxed separately, but the default position requires a husband to fill in the annual tax return on behalf of his wife.

As family law expert Advocate Barbara Corbett has said, the present situation is a ridiculous survival from earlier eras when the concept of women’s rights – a vital subset of human rights – scarcely existed. Quite rightly, Advocate Corbett says that it is high time that the Jersey law caught up with the realities of the 21st century.

Given the many other problems that Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf has to grapple with, it is unlikely that the issue of married women’s taxation will be among the top priorities for action. Nevertheless, Senator Ozouf has promised that taxing married couples will be among the matters considered as part of a wider overhaul of the income tax law. Indeed, changes could be proposed in next year’s Budget.

It is, of course, entirely possible that after any change in the law, a majority of couples would be content to be taxed jointly. But this would not undermine the principle underlying Advocate Corbett’s position. She is, for example, absolutely right to insist that the present system, which effectively requires a wife to ask permission of her husband to access her tax details is completely unsatisfactory.

It seems that the Income Tax department is content with the current arrangements, which, it asserts, is in line with human rights law. That might be technically true, but most people with anything approaching a modern outlook would surely say that this is an insufficient reason to defend a clearly archaic relic from less enlightened times.