Married couples are suffering discrimination under the State's tax laws, Labour Party finance spokeswoman Joan Burton has said.
Ms Burton said that while she had raised the issue in the Dáil on at least four occasions, the Government had failed to take remedial action. "If you have a single-income family who earn between €43,000 and €68,000 a year, that family will pay €6,000 a year more in tax than their counterparts where both spouses are in paid employment," she said.
The single-income married couple tax allowance stood at €43,000, while the double-income married couple tax allowance was €68,000, she said.
In addition, a double-income couple on PAYE were each entitled to a tax credit of €1,760, whereas in the case of a single-income couple, only the spouse at work qualified for the €1,760 credit. The spouse who stayed at home to care qualified instead for the home carer's credit of €770.
Ms Burton, who was the main speaker yesterday at a news conference organised by the Iona Institute for Religion and Society, a right-of-centre think tank, said she might differ with her hosts on other matters, but they were at one with regard to the impact of the tax regime on families.
"When Charlie McCreevy [ as minister for finance] introduced individualisation in the year 2000, it happened. It has rolled on then in successive budgets and, in every budget, the difference in relation to single-income couples and two-income married couples has actually grown."
Faced with childcare costs and the pressures of long-distance commuting, a married couple with two or more children might decide that one of them should leave the paid workforce and remain at home until the children were older.
But this would result in a tax penalty of about €6,000. If the same couple decided to separate and make a joint-custody arrangement for the care of their children, they would fare better under the tax system. "The State would actually, if you like, reward them for the split."
The home carer's tax credit of €770, which applied to a spouse caring for children or other dependent relatives in the home, should be brought up to the same level as the PAYE tax credit of €1,760.
She had been told by Minister for Finance Brian Cowen that individualisation had been brought in partly to make it more attractive for married women to go out to work and that the clock could not be turned back.
"The tax policy, as it has continued on individualisation, has significant social consequences, and I think it's time this debate was opened," she said.
Taxation should be kept under constant review: "I have called for a standing commission in relation to tax reform, something like the Law Reform Commission," Ms Burton said.
The Iona Institute also launched a pamphlet on the issue by barrister and legal researcher John Paul Byrne, entitled Tax Individualisation: Time for a Critical Rethink.
According to Mr Byrne, the tax system unfairly discriminates against a spouse who does not wish to enter the workforce or who, for one reason or another, wishes to leave the workforce.
In his conclusion to the pamphlet, he argues that "the current system uses a type of social engineering which subjects individuals to pressure to participate in the paid workforce. There is no justification for that type of Government interference in the personal sphere."