Vol. 433 No. 1
125 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for Finance the cost of permitting widows or widowers with dependants to claim the married persons' tax bands and of providing an additional £2,000 tax free allowance towards the cost of child minding for widows or widowers who go out to work; and whether he is undertaking a sympathetic review of the tax treatment of widows.
The estimated full year cost to the Exchequer of the changes mentioned by the Deputy is approximately £7 million in 1993/94 terms.
The tax treatment of widowed persons is being kept under review in my Department. There are, however, serious practical objections to giving double rate bands and an extra £2,000 tax free allowance to widowed parents. If these concessions were made for widowed parents there would be immediate calls for commensurate concessions to be extended to single parents, to married couples with children and to widowed parents on relatively low incomes who could not avail of all the concessions mentioned. As the doubling of the rate bands would benefit only the relatively better-off widowed parents who are currently on the higher rate of tax, about 35 per cent of the total, such calls for additional concessions would, in equity, be difficult to resist for single and married parents at all income levels and for widowed parents at lower income levels.
