United Future

Yes this is the only just way to tax families. It will also have an unintended consequence of encouraging reconciliation before separation and divorce. Money is often the hierarchies heal in relationships and fairness here will help.

On a similar subject, why has no political party looked at removing secondary tax. This antiquated form of tax has no place in the current economy and prevents hard working individuals from seeking work. People working in areas such as cleaning sometimes have up to 10 part time jobs to try and earn enough money to feed their family. Yet the tax system does its best to prevent them from doing so.
Peter, you are meant to be this country's tax guru, surely you can see the damage this form of tax is having on those that hard working Kiwi's who are just trying to make ends meet!

overall I think our tax and welfare system is much too complex and we need major moves to fix this. whatever you may think of Gareth Morgans flat tax-universal basic income ideas(personally I think there a great proposal to do basically what we are doing now in terms of helping financially those who do need help without most of the downsides of the current system) his "The Big Kahuna" shows absolutely damningly the damage done by over targeted politically manipulated tax and welfare system. it may seem counter intuitive but trying to devise some method of getting help to just those who need it with as few people getting help they don't need often costs more due to greater administration and the fact is there is a lot of evidence that some people still get tax breaks and benefits who don't actually need them. Also highly targeted systems often excludes people who will face real hardship financially because they do not meet some arbitrary condition on there lifestyle that may or may not have an effect on there finances as well as penalizing them for finding ways to improve there financial situation by adapting to there circumstances in ways that will lead to them bringing more money in themselves. What has all of this got to do with income splitting? well admittedly income splinting is a good idea as an adjustment to our existing system to leave more dollars in the pockets of those who need them but if we properly fixed taxation and welfare in this country I suspect it would become redundant.