[ A new tool from the National Women’s Law Center shows how
taxing billionaires could fund "long overdue" investments in the care
economy.]
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TAX THE PATRIARCHY TO SUPPORT WOMEN AND FAMILIES  
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Rebekah Entralgo
April 14, 2023
Inequality.Org
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_ A new tool from the National Women’s Law Center shows how taxing
billionaires could fund "long overdue" investments in the care
economy. _

, Simplemost

 

While millions of households across the United States are scrambling
to file — or extend — their taxes by the April 19th deadline,
members of our billionaire class are doing a great deal more smiling
than scrambling.

Why? Because the U.S. tax code is built to reward wealth over work and
serves big corporate interests over working families.

Trillions of dollars goes untaxed each year, deftly squirreled away by
tax professionals hired by the nation’s wealthy and powerful or left
untouched because the federal government doesn’t tax wealth as it
does income.

Over one recent five-year period, a
bombshell _ProPublica_ investigation from 2022 revealed
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the 25 richest Americans paid a true tax rate of roughly 3.4 percent.
This means nurses, teachers, firefighters, and other middle class
frontline workers paid a larger share of their income in taxes than
America’s billionaires.

Corporations, too, are skilled at avoiding taxation. In 2020, at least
55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate
income taxes
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enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. 

So what could we fund by creating a tax system where the wealthy
(mostly white men) and corporations (mostly led by white men) pay
their fair share? We could start by investing in women and families.

In the spirit of tax season, the National Women’s Law Center created
an interactive tax calculator [[link removed]] that
provides examples of how much revenue could be raised by taxing the
patriarchy through different tax policies — and how that money could
be used to fund public investments in paid leave, child care, and
aging and disability care, which all of us need and deserve. 

“People sometimes are put off by tax policy,” said Amy Matsui,
Director of Income Security and Senior Counsel at the National
Women’s Law Center. “We created the tool to show the connection
between tax policy and our ability as a nation to invest in people in
a concrete, simple, and hopefully fun way.”

“We hope people can use it to start conversations about why taxes
matter, and engage their communities in advocacy for a fairer and more
progressive tax system,” Matsui added.

According to the calculator, a tax on billionaire wealth could raise a
staggering $3 trillion dollars over a ten year period. By contrast,
creating a universal child care program where children between ages of
0 and 13 can access high-quality care, child care providers are paid a
living wage, and no family pays more than 7 percent of their income
for child care is estimated to cost $700 billion over the same ten
year period. 

Investments in the care economy are long overdue. With a rapidly aging
population and fewer care workers due to low wages with few benefits,
many economists are sounding the alarm of a care crisis. 

Increasing wages for care workers would have a positive impact on
racial and gender wealth inequality, as over 90 percent
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U.S. home care workers are women, more than half are women of color,
and 31 percent are immigrants. Putting more money in these workers’
pockets would bear substantial benefits for the entire economy.

Individuals and families can’t solve the care crisis on their own.
The economy cannot thrive if mothers, women, and caretakers continue
to be crushed by the lack of investments in the care economy. 

President Biden’s budget
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a number of common sense ways to reverse course from the failed
strategy of tax cuts for the wealthiest. Chief among them: raising the
top income tax rate, raising the corporate tax rate, taxing stock
buybacks, and closing some long standing loopholes. These provisions
would go far to make the tax code more progressive — and raise
revenues to support investments that benefit everyone.

“Our economy is less strong when workers who need care — that is,
all of us — have to cobble it together and figure it out on their
own,” said Matsui. “Women and families need and deserve robust
public investment in the care infrastructure, and we can’t wait any
longer.”

_Rebekah Entralgo is the managing editor of Inequality.org. You can
follow her on Twitter at @rebekahentralgo._

* tax fairness
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* Robin Hood Tax
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* Income Inequality
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