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Tax-deductible servants could free working women...

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Tax-deductible servants could free working women, create jobs for the unemployed … and bring us 21st century Downton Abbeys.

If I hired a researcher to help me with a book or an article I could deduct their pay from my taxes, because that’s a business cost. If I hired cleaners for my office, I could probably deduct their pay from my taxes, too, just as any other business can deduct the cost of maintaining its premises. But if I hired someone to clean my house, or mow my lawn I couldn’t deduct their pay from my taxes, because that would have nothing to do with my business.

It seems like a pretty straightforward distinction. But this week David Cameron has indicated that it’s one he’s thinking of abolishing. He’s been to Scandinavia and among the many ideas he’s picked up on his trip – including quotas for women on company boards – is that the cost of domestic staff should be tax-deductible to the people who hire them.

At the moment, many women - particularly those on lower incomes - pay a huge proportion of their incomes on all the services that enable them to go to work in the first place

Predictably this has caused outrage among egalitarians who see all domestic work as a form of servitude. This, they say, will take us back to the world of masters and servants. It’ll be Downton Abbey all over again. Surely we left that sort of thing behind years ago.

Well, up to a point we did. Not many families have the kind of staff that Lord and Lady Grantham employ (though some do, and I’ll come to them later). And young working-class girls aren’t pressed into ‘service’ as scullery maids. But every working mother in the country has to have some kind of arrangement that helps her cope with the domestic side of her life while she’s out earning her living.

A small, but growing minority have a househusband to do the job. Others leave the kids with their granny, or a neighbour or a family friend. But for millions of women with small children, cash has to change hands, whether to a day-care centre, a childminder, an au pair or, in the smartest homes, a full-time nanny. Without those expenses it’s not possible for them to work. So why is that not a business expense?

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It’s not just the kids: what about the housework? You don’t have to be very posh these days to be getting a little help around the house. Having someone to come in and do a few hours’ cleaning or ironing a week can make all the difference to a working woman’s life – or a working man’s, come to that. Why should that not be deductible?

Giving private employers tax-relief on their domestic costs has massive social benefits. At the moment, many women – particularly those on lower incomes – pay a huge proportion of their incomes on all the services that enable them to go to work in the first place. They don’t make any great profit on their jobs and they’re not much better off than if they just stayed unemployed and on benefits. So many women who could be working decide that there’s not much point.

That’s one of the many reasons 85% of all new jobs are taken by immigrants. But one way of getting what Gordon Brown once called ‘British jobs for British workers’ is to make it much easier and much more profitable to be working, rather than staying at home.

Meanwhile, if David Cameron really wants more women in boardrooms, he’s got to make it easier for women to work the long hours that a high-level executive career requires. Again, that would be made much easier if it was cheaper for women to hire other people to do the domestic tasks while they’re off smashing that glass ceiling.

Now, some would say that this is demeaning to the poorer women who will have to work as servants to the better-off. But why is it more demeaning to be a cleaner, doing an honest day’s work, than sitting at home all day on benefits watching Jeremy Kyle? Why is it more demeaning to spend a day cleaning a nice house, with the radio on and the kettle always ready for your next cup of coffee than working in a factory, or behind a supermarket checkout?

Here already: The 21st century Downton Abbeys

These days cleaners are hardly the oppressed drudges of days gone by.

They’re treated with far more equality and friendliness by their employers. They have every household gadget under the sun to help them. My sister is a middle-class woman with a First Class degree from Durham University. A few years ago she set up a small domestic cleaning company, starting with herself as the only member of staff. She didn’t feel that her job lacked dignity.

  More... No 10 'interested' in tax breaks for hired help: Scheme worth up to £3,000 could backfire on PM by encouraging employment of 'domestic servants'

Making staff tax-deductible would have another big plus: they, in turn, would have to declare their income to the taxman. Now, a lot of domestic work is currently done cash-in-hand, and a lot of that cash is paid to immigrant women who may very well be here illegally. If anyone gets exploited by the system, it’s these women, because they have no comeback against an employer who abuses or cheats them. It would be much, much better to have the whole thing above board, so that employees pay a fair rate, to legal workers who declare their incomes.

As for the 21st century Downton Abbeys, well, they’re here already. The vast wealth being made by the very lucky few at the top of our social pile: the bankers, corporate bosses, showbiz stars and Premiership footballers has created a new class of super-rich, who can afford great mansions, and the staff to run them. They already have housekeepers, butlers, chauffeurs, gardeners, chef and multiple nannies.

There’s a great story to be told about those people and I’ve been planning it for a while now. So if any publishers happen to be reading, please feel free to call me. Then I’ll be able to afford a cleaner, too …


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