Rejected petition One wage should be enough - make tax fair for families

Introduce Optional Joint Filing for married couples and civil partners. Let households pool income, split it equally, and apply both partners’ tax allowances and bands. Keep individual filing as default so no one is worse off.

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The UK tax system penalises families where one parent earns most or all of the income. Two people on £33k each pay far less tax than one earner on £66k supporting a partner and children. Optional Joint Filing fixes this unfairness, makes one wage go further, reduces reliance on Universal Credit, and brings us in line with family-friendly systems like Germany and France.

This petition was rejected

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

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You may wish to sign this petition which calls for a similar action: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/727117

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.

Date submitted 1 September 2025
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