Why marriage should be recognised in the tax system

Cameron has been fairly bold in entering the debate on marriage, because we don’t like do that debate in Britain. Not really – it’s private, and we Brits don’t like debating private things. Anything which helps marriage can easily be paraphrased as “deploying fiscal incentives to force something which should largely be a private decision”. And not by the left, but by our very own Pete Hoskin in the below post. Now, we are a heterodox bunch of baristas here at CoffeeHouse and we do disagree – so here is why I think Pete is wrong. I’d like to have a go offering some of the “convincing answers” he’s looking for.

Right now, millions of couples are better off apart under the perverted incentives of the welfare state. The Tories would remove this anomaly. They aren’t trying to “force” marriage – and I don’t believe that they should even encourage it.