Gender taxation

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Gender- specific taxation ( English gender-based taxation , in German-speaking discourse often “women's tax ” ) is the idea of designing tax models - especially the income tax rate - depending on the formal legal gender. The motivation is to compensate for the disadvantage of women in working life with a reduced tax rate.

Emergence

The idea of ​​a unilateral income tax reduction for women was published by the Italian economists Andrea Ichino and Alberto Alesina in March 2007 in the business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore . In order to improve the employment situation of women, one must reduce their income tax in order to offer them a greater incentive to take up work. At the same time, companies would be motivated to hire women because their gross wages could be slightly lower. In return, the taxation of men would have to increase slightly to offset the losses for the state.

Acceptance and criticism in Germany

In Germany, Antje Hermenau , leader of the Greens in Saxony , took up this proposal and described it as a “great contribution to more equality” . If the proposal were implemented, more women would find work and so “become the main breadwinner in the family and many men get to know the female situation in life” . Her initiative was supported by some women from politics and business, such as Gertrud Traud, chief economist at the Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen .

Meanwhile, politicians like Hildegard Müller (CDU), Christine Scheel (Greens), Barbara Höll (PDS) and Silvana Koch-Mehrin (FDP) considered the idea to be “intolerable” and even saw in it a definition of inequality or one with the principle of equality of the Basic Law and the prohibition of discrimination of EU incompatible control. The publicist and management consultant Gertrud Höhler also feared that it would weaken the self-confidence of women to receive help from the state instead of strengthening it. The writer Thea Dorn warned that employers could lower wages for women to the same extent as their taxation decreases, so that women have no advantage, but only the economy. The chairman of the Green Party, Reinhard Bütikofer , stated that the Presidium would not adopt Antje Hermenau's suggestion, and the FDP chairman, Guido Westerwelle , even described the idea as “absurd, unconstitutional, stupid” .

Austria

Eva Glawischnig-Piesczek from the Austrian Greens took up the idea of ​​a “gender based taxation” in 2008 in order to reduce “ wage discrimination based solely on chromosome composition ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Uwe Jean Heuser: women tax. Die Zeit , June 14, 2007, accessed on May 10, 2012 .
  2. ↑ Less taxes for women, more equality? Der Tagesspiegel , June 10, 2007, accessed on May 10, 2012 .
  3. ↑ Westerwelle calls women's tax "stupid". Die Welt , June 12, 2007, accessed May 10, 2012 .
  4. ↑ Half the tax burden for women instead of “men-motorists”. derStandard.at , June 5, 2008, accessed on May 10, 2012 .