Why Mommy Has to Work So Hard
WOMEN HAVE TO WORK IN ORDER TO support their families. "We hear this statement all the time, usually appended to some policy proposal or other. "We have to accept the reality of two-earner families because women have to work to support their families." "We have to subsidize day care, because women have to work tosupport their families." "We can't count on women to volunteer at schools and other community activities, because...." "We have to have labor force regulations that allow women to return to work quickly after childbirth because...." We hear this mantra so often, we almost forget to think about it.
A recent booklet published by the Independent Women's Forum sheds some light on the subject. Women and Taxes, by tax lawyer Eileen O'Conner, reveals this startling fact: The largest single bill for most families is their tax bill. Federal taxes, including Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, consume 26% of the median two-earner household's income, says the Tax Foundation. State and local taxes consume another 13% of this median two-earner income of $68,600. Compare the 39% share for taxes with the 15% for housing, 12% for medical care and 9% for food.
Few families have perfect equality of incomes between the partners. If one earner earns somewhat more than the other, say 60% of the income, the other contributes 40% of household resources. In this case, the person with the lower income is working entirely to pay the family's tax bills. Working mothers are often not really working to support their families, but to support the government.
We usually do not realize this, of course, because most of our taxes are deducted from our paychecks before we ever see the money. Even the personal finance program on your home computer will not automatically include the payroll taxes when it computes your expenditures by category. You have to make an effort to get the gross pay (prepayroll tax) into the calculator. You would have to make a really big effort to come up with a pretax income the way an economist would measure it - before deduction of either your piece of Social Security tax or your employer's.
 |
What does this mean for public policy? It means that many of the policies touted as assistance for working families are no such thing. Subsidized day care is the most egregious example. The government proposes to tax the family to provide a "service" for the family so that both adults can work outside the home. But a great many mothers would prefer to stay home with their children, rather than pay strangers to take care of them.
It means that proposals to lower tax rates will be family-friendly. During the recent campaign, George W. Bush proposed cuts in federal income taxes for people all across the income spectrum, replacing the current five-rate structure with four: 10%, 15%, 25% and 33%. The Bush plan would cut the rate on the lowest tax bracket from 15% to 10% of the first $6,000 of taxable income. Everyone who earned at least $6,000 would pay $600 on that income instead of the $900 they currently pay with a 15% rate. Millionaires would save $300 along with cab drivers and custodians. But who has a greater need for those 300 bucks? The gains to higher income earners should not blind us to the benefits of placing more discretionary income in the hands of families of more-modest earnings.
We sometimes hear that stay-at-home moms are dinosaurs, a relic of the Ozzie and Harriet era. We seldom hear that low tax rates are one of the things that made the single-earner family possible. The Tax Foundation says the median two-earner family in 1955 paid only 18% of its income for all taxes combined. If that were the rate today, mothers could spend more time with their children, or volunteering in civic organizations, not to mention spending less time in commuter traffic.
Give us a break. Women are tired of being wage slaves
Copyright © 2009 Yahoo! Australia & NZ Pty Limited. All rights reserved.
Privacy Policy - Terms of Service - Help