Letter: Impact of taxing child benefit

Sir: Your leading article on taxing child benefit ('Eroding a cornerstone', 20 July) suggested that this should be directed at the 40 per cent band.

The vast majority of recipients of child benefit are mothers, and very few of them pay top-rate tax. Husbands, of course, are a different case. Is it possible that in writing about 'prosperous mothers descending from expensive cars', you are thinking not so much about the tiny number of high- earning women so much as the rather larger number of wives of high-earning men? And do you therefore propose a U-turn on the independent tax status of all married women to secure a clawback of child benefit from high-income families?

'Logical' your proposal may be, but it needs a little more thinking out if it is not to create more injustice than it seeks to remedy.

Yours faithfully,

PENELOPE STOKES

Newbury, Berkshire