While
millions of households across the United
States were 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.
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.
Over
one recent five-year period, a bombshell ProPublica investigation
from 2022
revealed,
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 despite
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 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 of
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 contains
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."
This
commentary is also posted on Inequality.org.
