This was in 1998, I think her gross income was about £14K, the tax rate AIR was 25%, plus 10% National Insurance which applied to almost all her income. The allowance I think was £4.5K.
I missed the national insurance bit. In Australia there is a 1.5& medicare levy in addition to the 15% rate, although I think that it may be less than 1.5% for low income earners. (Superannuation in Australia is funded by a 9% levy on employers which is then paid into private funds - so sort of like a tax-farmed payroll tax.)
Besides confirming what I already knew - namely, that Australia has fairly low income tax rates by OECD standards - your story shows that the UK tax free threshold is revised from time to time - whereas in Australia it has been at $6,000 for a long time. The minimum wage in Australia is about $30,000 full time, and I think the median full time wage would be around $50,000, so the tax free threshold is not a very big part of any full time worker's income.
There is some talk at the moment about singificantly increasing the threshold as part of the income tax changes that would be associated with introducing a carbon tax, but the current political state of play in Australia is such that it's hard to know what will eventually result from these deliberations . . .
had no income at the time, doing my PhD - we had actually been better off with me getting a tax-free student access fund grant from my University.
Overall not a good situation. I can see why sobbing was in order!
I had an easier financial time with my PhD - I had a tax exempt stipend (about $17,000 pa) plus money from sessional teaching, and my partner was working full time as a high school teacher (earning somewhere in the mid-40-thousands, I think). This was 2000-2003 - I ended up getting my job before I actually finished my doctorate (in 2006), which solved whatever minimimal financial pressures we had.