The National Women’s Law Center fights for gender justice—in the courts, in public policy, and in our society.
Gender and the Tax Code
Tax Justice Is Gender Justice
The tax code sets the rules that shape our economy, reflecting and perpetuating notions of who and what our society values. But today’s tax code contains outdated and often biased assumptions about family structures, marriage, participation in the paid workforce, and more that disadvantage women, people of color, and families with low incomes. And loopholes and decades of unfair tax cuts have allowed the rich to get richer and left everyone else—especially women and people of color—behind. But it doesn’t have to be this way: we can harness the full potential of the tax code to advance gender and racial equity, and support an economy that works for all of us.
Check out our four interrelated reports that examine the federal tax code with a focus on gender and racial equity, as well as explore policies to make the tax code work for all of us.
Tax Justice Is Gender Justice Executive Summary
The tax code’s primary purpose is to collect revenue, which, in turn, supports public investments in our shared national priorities. And yet, the power of the tax code goes much further: it rewards and incentivizes behavior by individuals, families, businesses, and government systems. It favors certain lifestyles and household structures.
1. The Faulty Foundations of the Tax Code
Gender and Racial Bias in Our Tax Laws
The tax code is an important tool to fight inequality, and yet is simultaneously plagued with provisions that reflect outdated and, in some cases, biased, assumptions about family structures, marriage, participation in the paid workforce, caregiving, and wealth.
2. Reckoning With the Hidden Rules of Gender in the Tax Code
How Low Taxes on Corporations and the Wealthy Impact Women’s Economic Opportunity and Security
The tax code helps set the rules for how our economy works and how wealth and power are distributed. Low taxes on the wealthy and corporations result in fewer revenues, which lead policymakers to constrain investments in programs and benefits important to women. A powerful but lesser-known effect is how these low taxes also incent or enable behaviors that have negative downstream effects on women’s economic well-being, stability, and opportunity.
3. A Tax Code for the Rest of Us
A Framework & Recommendations for Advancing Gender & Racial Equity Through Tax Credits
While the U.S. income tax system is progressive overall, many aspects of the tax code reward wealth-building by the already-wealthy and exclude low- and moderate-income families. Given the historical discrimination and ongoing structural barriers that have locked women and people of color out of opportunities for wealth-building, such tax provisions exacerbate economic inequality and amplify gender and racial inequities.
4. Advancing Gender and Racial Equity by Taxing Wealth
The tax code encourages the wealthy to hoard their wealth, shields such wealth from taxation, and enables its transfer across generations. By doing so, the tax code further concentrates wealth in the hands of the privileged few, perpetuates racial and gender wealth gaps, and deprives us of revenues that could be put toward public investments that benefit women and people of color.
