Most of the baby-boom generation will recall that newspapers once featured a "women"s page," as though women were uninterested in front-page news, business, or sports. In similar restrictive style, a kind of ideological apartheid now tags certain themes as "women"s issues." Unfortunately, the familiar politically correct litany - glass ceiling, Title IX, reproductive rights - fails to include the tax code.
The tax system takes productive, successful women, a group whose ranks are increasing, and singles them out for special punishment. Consider the way the system works, which is at odds with the U.S. Constitution.
The Constitution mandates equal protection under the law, but the tax system selects women who are productive and punishes them with higher rates of taxation than those who are less productive. The most successful women find that the system confiscates nearly half of their income. Unlike those who pay fines because of some traffic violation or misdemeanor, these women have not done anything wrong.
What they did choose to do was work more hours, render more services, and take more risks. In some cases they created and sold more useful products that people are willing to buy in an open market and generally conducted more economic activity than many of their peers who chose to work less, or not at all.
This economic activity brought benefits to the productive, their families, and many others including the government. But productivity profiling slaps the most productive people with higher rates of taxation. It rewards those who worked less, or not at all, with lower rates. The message is inescapable.
The system of productivity profiling tells women that there must be something nefarious about economic activity, entrepreneurship, hard work, and dedication for the government to tax these qualities at a more punitive rate. Otherwise, those who work more would be rewarded, not punished.
Likewise, there must be something foolish about those who work hard only to have the fruits of their labor confiscated in increasing amounts. Better to work less, or not at all, because the system sends the message that, as in serfdom, the state has a prior claim to what one earns.
That is also the message of withholding, the practice that dates from World War II, in which the government gets the worker's money before she does. Then, accordingly, it takes more or gives the worker some of her own money back, with no interest, after filing a return. This leaves the impression that only women"s take-home pay belongs to her. Actually, she earned all of it.
It gets worse. If a woman chooses to marry, she pays more taxes than if she remained single. The incentives are to remain single, unproductive, and dependent. By any moral code, this system is wrong. But that fails to register with standard-brand feminists.
Those who want equal pay for equal work remain strangely silent in the face of a system that rewards hard work with unequal, punitive taxes. High profile, celebrity feminists favor the current system, or even push for higher taxes. This group talks about independence from men, but cultivates dependence on Big Brother. They talk about social justice, but have become the women"s auxiliary of the nanny state.
Yes, Virginia, taxes are a women's issue, and I propose this test. When anybody claims to represent women, or to be a leader in the women"s movement, ask them what they think of taxing more productive women at higher rates. That will make everything clear.
Anyone who fails to see the injustice in the current tax system forfeits any claim to speak for equality. Justice and equality under the law demands that everyone pay the same tax rate. Productive women should be rewarded, not punished, for their hard work.
Sally Pipes is President and CEO at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.
