For many Americans, taxes are a chore to complete once a year. But if you reflect on the tax code long enough, you may see it differently — as a reflection of values, or even a national anthem. In some places, it may also sound anti-feminist.
Bridget J. Crawford, a professor at Pace University’s Elisabeth Haub School of Law, has analyzed the tax code through all of these lenses in her academic work, which has a recurring refrain: The tax code is not neutral.
She has long believed that it reinforces power imbalances and gender inequality in particular, which led her and a colleague to chase after a question: What would the tax code look like if it were reimagined through a feminist framework?
Professor Crawford and Anthony C. Infanti, her co-author and a fellow law professor, edited a book several years ago in which a group of experts rewrote tax-related judicial decisions through that filter, using the law as it existed at the time the cases were decided.
But they took a more expansive view of feminism. “It certainly has its historic roots in the feminist movement and women’s rights, but our version is much broader than that — and it’s for everybody,” Professor Crawford said. “Feminism is, at its core, the effort to ensure that our legal and economic systems allow everyone to live with equal dignity, autonomy and economic security.”
The tax code underwent yet another round of revisions in the sweeping tax and policy law — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — that Congress passed last summer.
With tax season upon us, we asked Professor Crawford to reflect upon the tax landscape today, and what she’d rewrite if given the chance.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
What’s the most anti-feminist thing about our tax code?
The tax code often assumes that economic resources within a household are shared equally and that caregiving has no independent economic value. Both assumptions obscure the realities of inequality and disproportionately disadvantage women.
So child care, for example, or perhaps an aging parent.
One at the top of mind has to be child care. The child and dependent care tax credit covers just such a small portion of actual child care costs, and it phases out for middle- and upper-income households. So it neither fully supports the poor nor does it really incentivize participation for professionals who are balancing high-cost care and high taxes.
The fact that child care is treated as a personal expense rather than a work-related necessity is a huge issue.
Caregivers who are unpaid are not contributing to Social Security and other tax-related benefits, and that leads to longer-term economic inequalities.
We know that some married couples filing jointly might be penalized and pay more in taxes than they would had they filed individually, while other couples benefit from a marriage bonus, paying less. Is there a better way?
There isn’t a perfect system. Joint taxation can benefit some couples and disadvantage others, depending on how income is distributed between spouses.
In dual-earner households, the second income is often taxed at a higher marginal rate. Historically, that’s more likely to be the wife, not the husband, and that higher rate of taxation can disincentivize her labor force participation. So there’s a good argument to me that the joint return itself discourages women’s employment and reinforces traditional gender roles.
But individual taxation has the advantage of neutrality — it avoids rewarding or penalizing people based on marital status and treats each taxpayer as economically autonomous.
The American tax code is progressive, at least in part, because higher earnings are taxed at higher rates. But in practice, there are plenty of regressive features. Warren Buffett famously said he paid a lower rate than his secretary. That seems pretty anti-feminist.
The gap between tax rates on labor and tax rates on capital is one of the most important drivers of inequality. Gender inequality and wealth inequality are deeply intertwined, so when the tax code privileges capital, it often indirectly privileges men. Feminist tax analysis helps make those structural effects visible.
Also very visible: the growth of the billionaire class. They can have an outsize influence and power on electoral politics and policymaking. How large of a role does the tax code play when it comes to wealth concentration?
The tax code makes it easier to build and sustain wealth than to earn a living through work. That structural choice has profound consequences for inequality.
Was there a time when the tax code was more equitable? It probably wasn’t more feminist, at least in the traditional sense.
The mid-20th-century tax system did more to limit extreme wealth, even if it did not fully address gender inequality. Progressivity alone is not sufficient, but it is an important foundation for equity. The estate tax once reflected a democratic commitment to preventing permanent economic aristocracies. Its decline means we’ve embraced the inequalities of a new Gilded Age.
How does the sweeping tax law passed last summer — and that takes partial effect during the current tax season (for tax year 2025) — fit into the big picture?
I think it’s the ultimate example of technocratic changes being a veil to what’s really going on. And what’s really going on are continued tax benefits for the wealthy, minor reform at the margin for people like tipped workers, but extraordinary cruelty toward families and people living in poverty.
If you could rewrite a piece (or pieces) of the tax code, what would you change?
Tax law is not just about raising revenue. It communicates whose work and whose lives the law values. A feminist tax code would be attentive to how tax rules shape economic independence, caregiving and bodily autonomy. We need to stop privileging wealth over work.
Tara Siegel Bernard writes about personal finance for The Times, from saving for college to paying for retirement and everything in between.
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