Before British women had the vote or much else in the way of legal equality, the law treated the assets and income of married women very awkwardly. In some circumstances, such things were considered community property, in others, the property of the husband, in others, the property of the wife. For example, the law instituted a surtax on the joint income of the husband and wife, but made the husband exclusively responsible for it. But what happens when the husband is a non-resident alien, or, in the case of George Bernard Shaw, when the wife refuses to reveal her income even to her husband?
The Super-Tax on the Super-Man
Mr. George Bernard Shaw has been writing to the Times on grievances connected with the regulations for the imposition of the super-tax.
His grievance is that he is asked by the authorities to give a return of his wife’s income as well as his own.
But as Mrs. G.B.S. refuses to tell him the amount of it, he writes to the authorities to ask them what he is to do.
There is no regulation pointing out how one may insist upon one’s wife divulging her income to her husband, and beyond guessing at it from what she spends, the ingenious G.B.S. declares that he can give the authorities no help.
He has pointed out to his wife that he may be put in prison for a faulty return, but instead of softening at the thought she would appear to have told him that numbers of women had gone to prison for the cause, and it was high time a man went.
But besides this recalcitrant attitude of Mrs. G.B.S., Mr. Shaw points out that his wife’s income may prove to be greater than his own, and he is expected to pay on both!…
