Letter: The positive alternatives to negative income tax welfare schemes

Sir: The question of the possible integration of the tax and benefits system is, of course, one option that any radical review of income maintenance should consider. However, it is not the panacea that you suggest.

You propose a negative income tax (NIT), under which everyone would make an annual statement of income. Such a system is ill-equipped to deal with the frequently fluctuating incomes and circumstances typical of people on low incomes. This is a particularly serious problem for those with no other income to fall back on.

It is true that an integrated scheme would reduce the problem of low take-up endemic to current means-tested schemes. However, even some advocates of NIT accept that it would not necessarily solve it completely. At the same time, the problem of benefit being clawed back as extra income is earned is likely to be intensified under a NIT scheme.

An NIT scheme would almost inevitably be based on the couple, rather than the individuals as the adult benefit unit, given the problem of applying a means test to individuals within couples. This would represent a regressive step from the perspective of women's independent taxation and faltering steps towards wider independent receipt of social security benefits.

Finally, before we discuss particular vehicles for the delivery of social security, we need a debate about the functions of a social security system. Your leading article assumes its only function is to relieve poverty. Others would argue that social security also has wider functions that, together, are about the prevention of poverty.

Yours sincerely,

RUTH LISTER

Professor of Applied Social Studies

University of Bradford

Bradford, West Yorkshire

10 February