PENALISING BACHELORS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10285, 21 May 1919, Page 2

PENALISING BACHELORS.

Speaking of the income tax in America, tho "New York Times" saye: —lt should not b 0 forgotten that for the first time, in a national way of speaking, there is furnished a firstclass instrument for the imposition or a tax on bachelors. It is far from being the ideal bachelor tax that has been dreamed of by spinsters and envious married men, for unfortunately it falls on spinsters with just aa much severity as on bachelors. But still it Berves. Tho conspicuous fact is that it recognises bachelors and soaks them financially on an equitable basis. And tho correlative fact that the spinsters are taxed equally is really less of an injustice than it may appear. Consider, for instance, a bachelor and a spinßter, each enjoying an income of 1500 dollars.' Aa we understand it, their liability is the same. Kach is taied on 60& dollars. But this falls more heavily on the man than on the woman, if it is true, as we have been told, that the average woman is much more ingenious than the average man in making an income meet expenses. We sort of gather that a spinster, without encumbrances or dependents, might be considered fairly affluent with an income of 1600 dollars, whereas th«i average bachelor on that amount would be just scraping along. Aside from the question of a sex discrimination that might have been displayed, but was not, it seems that the- Government has shown a mighty keen intelligence in providing for married people's exemption. A thousand dollars is allowed as the exemption for ' a bachelor or spinster, and two thousand dollars for married people. Herein is the official destruction of the old and popular saying, that "two can live as cheaply as one." More than any other single thing, that has probably started off young married couples with an ingenuous and absolute misconception of the financial problems of domesticity. There may have been a time when it was true, but it is not so to-day. The Government recognises the brutal facts when it places the exemptions at one thousand and two thousand dollars respectively. The disagreeable truth is, as all exeprienced persons' have learned, that two actually do live twice ae expensively as ono, and if they attempt to prove that the old saying is true, they only succeed in living half as well as they did when the two were one and one.