DAILY MAIL: Married couples are being brutally punished by Labour's tax and benefit system, according to research to be published tomorrow.
Experts say that couples where one partner works and the other stays at home are the worst affected, paying a far higher proportion of their incomes to the taxman than in almost any other civilised country.
Britain is almost alone in failing to reward couples that stay together, according to the first international study of its kind.
A one-earner couple on average earnings of £30,800 a year pays 40 per cent more tax in Britain than in comparable members of the OECD group of developed nations.
And, compared to European Union states, the average family is paying 25 per cent more tax.
The study, carried out for Care, a Christian charity that tackles poverty, concludes that single people with no children do far better than families.
In other OECD countries, the tax paid by one-earner married couples on average wages is around 50 per cent of that paid by a single person on the same income.
But in Britain the figure is 75 per cent - even when tax credits and child benefit are taken into account. The findings will fuel concern that Labour's tax and benefit policies are helping to destroy family life. How Labour's tax system punishes couples for being married >>> By James Chapman
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