From the issue of The Vote ():
Married Women and Tax Resistance.
From a leaflet issued by the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and costing
2d., we take the following
extracts:
The position of married women in relation to the direct annual taxes, such
as Super Tax, Income Tax, Property Tax, and Inhabited House Duty, is a
very simple one, and easily grasped. No married woman is liable for any of
these taxes. It is illegal to demand payment from her, to enforce or attempt
to enforce payment, or even to ask her to furnish particulars of her
property or income. This total exemption of the married woman from taxability
arises out of the ancient and now nearly obsolete law of coverture, which
holds that a husband and wife are “one,” and the husband is that
“one.” Therefore the Income Tax Act, which was passed in
, but still holds good, stipulates that no
married woman shall be held liable for taxes. Section 45 of that Act reads
thus:— “Provided always, that the profits of any married
woman living with her husband shall be deemed to be the profits of the
husband, and the same shall be charged in the name of the husband,
and not in her name, nor of her trustee.”
The above clause has never been repealed, and still governs the case of
the Super Tax, the Income Tax, the Property Tax, and the Inhabited House
Duty.
The ruling powers delight in asserting and maintaining the “disabilities” of
the married woman. They decline to recognise her as a parental unit. They
deny her the privilege of being a mayor or a municipal councillor, and
insist that even if the single woman is given the Parliamentary vote, the
married woman must not be allowed to participate in the privilege. In short,
they believe in the law of coverture when it suits themselves. But women are
now too wide awake to allow the game of “having it both ways” to be longer
played on them. They know better than to continue to submit to a policy
which may be summed up as, Heads I win — tails you lose.
Married women in receipt of incomes can testify, from their own experience,
as to whether the law in regard to their non-taxability is obeyed, or
whether it is openly and flagrantly defied. It appears that large numbers
of married women are paying taxes regularly, without making the slightest
protest against the illegal procedure of which they are the victims. This is
probably due to their ignorance of their legal status (or rather, lack of
status) just as many of them are unaware that they are not the legal
“parents” of their children.
When pressed on the subject of married women and taxes, the Somerset House
and Treasury officials will not, in fact dare not, deny that their methods
are illegal. If asked to show their authority for imposing taxes on married
women, they cultivate a stony silence. All the chicanery of the
“Circumlocution Office” is brought into play, and anyone who likes can
repeat the experience of Arthur Clennam in
“Little Dorrit,”
by writing a few letters, or making a call at Somerset House, where “knowing
nothing” has been brought to a fine art. Officialdom finds itself incapable
of understanding the simplest question, when the question happens to be one
to which it can find no answer, and which is asked by a woman.
Many married women, including leading actresses, doctors, titled women,
business women, and various others having property, businesses, investments,
&c., or
being in receipt of salaries, have succeeded in demonstrating their
non-taxability, and thereby involved the Revenue in a total loss of the tax
illegally charged on them.
