April 18, 2025 • 31 mins
With Tax day and the onslaught of tariffs in the US, Anney and Samantha dig into sexism embedded in the tax code, pink taxes and pink tariffs.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff
I've never told you, but if I heard you. And
today is April seventeenth, twenty twenty five as we record this,
which means we just passed tax Day in the United States.
(00:30):
Taxes are so stressful. They are I hate doing them.
I feel like I have to just focus so hard,
get out my dictionary. I feel like I'm being tricked, Like, Okay,
you're telling me that I just don't think I have this,
(00:50):
but you're telling me I do. It's just a mess.
How was it for you this year, Samantha.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So I started in really early because what we usually
get for our job in general went down significantly. That
made me have a panic moment, and I knew with
everything happening with the new administration that I wanted to
get it done as soon as possible with all the
When I got all the documents, and I don't have
(01:21):
as much as many other people say, so we only
have one succinct job I do, and then like a
house and a few other things, and the forms come
in pretty quickly, like the first month. So as soon
as I got them all, I went in immediately because
I was like nope, nope, y'all, y'all can't trick me.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You can't trick me.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So it was pretty seamless and I got everything back
pretty quickly soon after I turned everything in as well
as started. I think a federal was really fast this
year for me. All the headlines started popping up about
all the changes that could be coming.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I was like, yeah, nope, I got it done. Do
you can't get me?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So I felt a little like out of myself, were
trying to get this out the way.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, i'd say all about braggy form.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Sorry, y'all, No, that's all right. Taxes, I usually try
to get them done early, but I feel like I'm
always missing one form yeah, which sometimes is true and
sometimes isn't. But this year I told you, I mistakenly
misremembered when we recorded the audio book and tried to
(02:29):
log that in into my dad and it was like no, no, no,
no no. And that's when I had a wake up
calls like, oh wow, time has really ceased to matter
to me. I haven't gotten anything back yet, so we'll see,
we'll see. And famously I have been famously to me,
(02:51):
I have been audited so very paranoid very, very paranoid.
But today we thought we would do kind of an
overview of some issues with women in taxes and then
women in tariffs, which is a big conversation happening in
(03:13):
the US right now. I would love if people from
other countries would write in about how taxes work in
your country. I'm just curious. But yes, you could see
our past episodes on the pink tax and also I
would say our Marriage and People with Disabilities episode where
we talked about that. But all right, starting with taxes.
(03:37):
Tax Day was a couple of days ago as we
record this, and I wanted to look to see if
there were any issues around sexism and taxes, and of
course the answer is yes, of course it is. One
of the main things I found was joint filing with
the spouse in the US often results in women getting
taxed at a higher rate in a heteronormative sense, because
(04:01):
these rules were designed when women largely stayed at home
while men worked and were largely designed to spare white
men some tax money. Now that women often work along
with their partner, this can mean that women are getting
tax more highly, and it has to do with the
gender pay gap. A bunch of other things, but that
(04:21):
is one of the main reasons. While partners can file
their taxes separately, only seven percent due this leads some
women to decide to quit their jobs and focus on
childcare to save money, which, as we always say, you know,
if you want to stay at home and take care
of children, that's fantastic. That is not a lesser choice,
(04:43):
but it should be a choice, not something that you're
forced into. Studies have found that reworking the whole thing,
are getting rid of this sort of joint filing system
that we have right now all together, would increase married
women's participation in the workforce. Most other countries have abandoned
(05:03):
this system, by the way, but all right, there is
a lot of history behind this. For a long time
in the US, women were considered second class citizens and
married women were required to file under their husband's name.
In the nineties, activists did try to amend this whole
thing or get rid of it, but conservatives claimed it
(05:25):
was essentially an attack on women being homemakers and traditional marriage,
so they were like, no way.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Interestingly, according to miss magazine, single women are hit hard too.
Here's a quote quote. The tax code has been designed
to favor married couples, as former Department of the Treasury
tax attorney Lily King concluded in a paper on the
lack of fairness within our system, She writes, a single
person never pays less relative to a couple, whether married
(05:54):
or unmarried, with the same amount of income as a
single person.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Studies for black folks and gay folks are penalized too,
for largely systemic reasons. I guess I should put here.
I think it's obvious, but we're not tax experts. Uh
so you can there have been, There has been a
lot written about this, and you can look into it
if you would like, but for now we're just doing
(06:21):
kind of an overview. I will say, my dad used
to do my taxes, and it did feel at the
time that like he was the man who understood it
and I could never get it, you know. And I
don't think he was projecting that to me necessarily, but
that's what I was kind of picking up. And also
(06:44):
I don't blame him, but it was the tax return
he turned in that got me audited.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh really, I don't think I knew those I thought
you would actually had a technology.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
But but I think that the penalty should have been
very minor. But I moved and I think I missed
the notification and it just builds up if you don't
know you got it. And so it should have been
a minor like he missed it, one thing, he did
(07:18):
one thing incorrectly. It should have been like a two
hundred dollars fee. It got a lot higher than that.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So this is a question I have in which even
not before this administration, but like all of the departments,
especially like things like the tax irs and such, it's
impossible to get to them and you can never figure
out how to try contest anything.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And everything comes through mail, and.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
If you don't get it, it literally just gets set
back and that's it, and then you get penalized for that.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That seems absurd. It is, and it feels like a setup.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It is, and now they're firing more of the RS people.
Of course, when I finally got to an IRIS person
when I was being audited, she was crying and I
was like, oh God, it's gonna be okay. Meanwhile, I'm thinking,
look at this fee. This is ridiculous. It was a
(08:20):
very ridiculous fee. It was horrible. I cried every time
I got a message from the rs, and essentially it
was from like one little error and me moving and
not getting a message, and it was pretty devastating. Like
if I hadn't had savings, that would have really taken
(08:42):
me out. And it wasn't really my fault, right, I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That's kind of what happened with like student loans and
people's like if you can't pay off it an entire chunk, it.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Just builds up.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Like I looked back at the amount of what I
originally took out, and it has grown eight times what.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I took out. And by the way, I've been paying.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Oh, I paid for like the past entirety of my
college except for like one year with the pause when
doing COVID, and like it's such an absurd amount that
it went to from what it was to, which is
because I was not as a social worker who got
paid less amenimum wage, could not pay the entirety of
(09:30):
the amount, so it just grew.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yeah, stuff like that, just like this is where it's
a scheme.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah yeah, oh yeah, because again I'm not going to
give you the number, but Samantha knows it. And it
was horrendous. Yeah, and I should have only paid two
hundred and it was eyewatering how much I ended up
having to pay, And it was just because I didn't
know I had something to pay. I had to hire
(10:00):
a fancy lawyer.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Right. We even had to shell out more money, yes,
to get it settled.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yes. Another thing that people talk about when it comes
to women and the tax industry here in the US
and around the world, it's largely made up of men.
Also no surprise, especially in kind of more executive leadership roles.
(10:32):
I read somewhere that women only account for about eleven
percent of finance ministers. There's also a whole story about
how there was a Finance global summit and there was
only one woman and she wasn't allowed to take a
picture with the men. So it's not great. That's not good.
Another thing that's no surprise. A nine out of ten
(10:54):
US dollar billionaires are men. So if they aren't getting
properly taxed, or they're aren't getting properly taxed, why does
the gender poverty gap and the gender savings gap? Uh?
And yeah, there are other more complicated ways taxes impact
women too, including how taxes are allocated, what tax funded
(11:18):
programs they go to or don't go to, improving safety
in public spaces, investment into things like domestic violence, childcare,
all of which childcare still largely falls to women. And
a lot of the tax uh blog posts I read
were about this. As you can imagine, those are not
a high priority for this administration, and in fact they
(11:40):
are actively being dismantled. So that's another way taxes impact women.
And of course all of this is made worse by
the pink tax, which we have talked about before. But
the pink taxes when products typically more geared towards women,
are more heavily text or even just products women need,
(12:04):
they're just more heavily taxed, so that makes the whole
thing worse.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Interestingly, I came up on someone who just wrote a
book titled Double Tax, The Double Tax an a giftyman.
I'm so sorry if I said that right, I'm gonna
find the correct way to say, because I'm really interested
in this book. And she writes not only about the
pink text, but how women of color, specifically black women
are doubly taxed on top of that, and then talking
(12:33):
about tarofts.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
So we'll look into that.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
But I find that fact like conversation starting to happen more,
and I'm really glad to that. But it is is
this like eye opening moment of realizing, yeah, this is
gonna affect everyone, but who's gonna affect the most are
black women.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yep. Yeah, which does bring us to tariffs and so
called pink tariffs.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Okay, a fun name for that too, I know, let's just.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Put a fun name on it. Okay, So again, not experts,
but I did want to put this in here because
a lot of people do get this wrong, including some
people that are running this country. A tariff is paid
by the country doing the imboarding, not the country where
the products are coming from. All right, Okay, so Trump
(13:28):
has long been obsessed with tariffs. He made it clear
all of you CEOs that are now mad, that this
was something he was going to do, something to expect.
And of course the rollout of his tariffs was disasters
and hurt not only the US economy but the global economy.
So he paused them for ninety days, which, by the way,
he had been president less than ninety days when this happened.
(13:50):
Isn't that a fun fact? Apart from the tariffs on China,
which is an ongoing thing right now, but you know,
be cool, it's Okay, be cool. Oh if they do.
If these tariffs do roll out, according to plan, they
are anticipated to cost American households and annual sixteen hundred
to two thousand dollars, but other estimates put it higher
(14:11):
in the three thousand dollars range, which is a lot.
And this is this is a thing I found that
I was shocked and then like, I guess, So apparently
in cells love Trump's tariffs and think they will get
them girl friends. All right, So the Manisphere, which we
(14:36):
did we have an episode on you can check out
that we did pretty immediately after the election, is torn
between confusion and anger at these tariffs. They don't know
a lot of them are just trying to explain them
away or justify them, even as Trump himself is going
all over the place and backtracking and changing his mind.
(15:00):
Markets in turmoil. And then of course I don't know
why we gotta do this, but here we are. A
Fox News host wondered if tariffs could be the ultimate
testosterone boost. Another one claimed that the return of factory
jobs to the US is good because quote, when you
sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman.
(15:22):
Studies have shown this. Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the Kirn read something
like Trump's manly tariffs. This is a real thing and
it was a meme, so you can look that up.
Because these are manly jobs. Another big argument is like,
(15:43):
if you can't stomach the turmoil, you're no man. Yeah,
successful men must suffer. They don't have fun. You hustle
except sometimes but mostly no.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Can we also talk about with this level will of
like become a man being the factory, be out there,
use your hands. The black lung has come back. Oh
I just read that because of this has everything to
do with the CDC and the different health departments and
the disease prevention stuff. But in this conversation of like,
(16:22):
beware coal miners who are still existing, who some of them,
chunk of them did vote for Trump. Union people who
are voting and said we should, they didn't. They never
necessarily endorsed Trump, but they didn't endorse anyone else. Like
certain peoples were like, oh no, but definitely Trump. Yeah,
old school diseases, which I don't think they were eradicated.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Like give me, I don't know much about black lung,
so maybe.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Someone else who does can come at me and let
me know. But yeah, they're talking about reported cases of
an increase or a notable difference of increase in black lung.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Be a man diarly of black log.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, well, there is a lot being written about this
because there's a lot of discourse that's happening within the manisphere.
That is, essentially women are at fault, of course, because
they messed with the quote natural order and they were
having fun. They were ruining men's lives by having fun
(17:26):
and by wanting divorces, and so the discourse is men,
you shouldn't be having fun. This should hurt, and if
you question it, what's wrong with you? It's very much
turning it on, like you can't if you're too weak,
(17:49):
if you can't stomach what this is. But also it's
very funny slash sad how quickly even proponents of the tariffs,
or at least they say they're proponents of these tariffs
fold when reporters are like, but what about automation and
AI won't that and they just can't answer it. They
(18:13):
just cannot answer it. And I'm.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
It's similar questions to what's happening with immigration, Like when
they're being questioned with like.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Well, how do you know this? How are you Why
are you.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Defying the judges? Who has more rules? Should everyone follow
the judges' rules? And they're just like you talked about
lawyers LeMond, like literally no answers because they know it
cannot stand up in true argument, which is also why
like town halls are being very very organized to make
sure that they don't have any opposition. Mtg R Jorie
(18:47):
Taylor Green just decided to arrest all of them and
also pretty much stun gun them for talking.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, yeah, you don't have answers. There is one clip
that is I mean again it's it's sad, but it's
also kind of funny where the journalist just asked, I
think it's the main tariff guy, Steve whatever his name is,
Well you know who I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
No, no, no, no, the very pale ball dude.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Right yeah, yeah, yeah. She she asked him about this
and he was He just literally kind of trails off
and is like, yeah, okay. Also, I just have to
put this in here. This is not new, but I
(19:43):
ran into it when I was researching this. I love
how many interesting end quotes articles I find about in
cells aren't just kind of traditionalist men or they're they're like,
I want a woman, but women I hate them, all right,
But if she'll have me, then I guess she's fine.
But also I deserve more than her.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
She should be grateful for me. And if she's not
going down to me, then she's not doing her duty.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
It's just it's fascinating to me. It's fascinating and terrifying
how they're like, I want a woman. I hate this woman,
but she'll do okay, great.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Thank you so much. I love this.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
But okay. That does bring us to pink tariffs. According
to a study by the US International Trade Commission conducted
in twenty eighteen, tariffs impact women and low income people disproportionately.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Right So, a bill introduced in March twenty twenty five
by two US congress women calls for the Treasury Department
to study pink tariffs. This is because since we're all
talking about tears because of Trump, people have pointed out
some gender discrepancies and disparities. For example, a jacket classified
as a men's jacket maybe tax at a lower rate
(21:01):
than a women's checket, same product, more taxes. The proposed
tears are only going to magnify the problem of paint taxes.
On top of that, unisex clothing stands to be taxed
as if they were women's clothes.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Obviously, Yeah, And one of the big arguments people that
are proponents of this make is that men are generally bigger,
so it costs morephabric but the cost that doesn't make sense.
The cost analysis doesn't work out that way. Some quick numbers,
the US imports an estimated ninety eight percent of clothes
and ninety nine percent of shoes. According to the Progressive
(21:37):
Policy Institute or PPI, taxes and tariffs on women's clothing
likely costs women around two point five billion dollars a year.
On average, Women pay three percent more on tariffs in
the clothing category as compared to men. Women's clothes also
are more frequently made with more expensive and more highly
taxed fibers, further driving up the impact of tariffs, and
(22:01):
there are quite a few examples. One that pops up
pretty often in articles about this is that men's silk
underwear is often taxed at two point nine percent, while
women's silk underwear is at two point one percent. For
wool jackets, the tariff on men's is six percent, while
it's sixteen percent for women. Studies from twenty twenty three
(22:21):
found that Vietnam and China globally exported more than half
of the supply of underwear, So again that the country
that's importing the thing is paying the ters, right.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
I think we all know this, and this is there's
this level of like rooting for the lesser evil because
China is not great. They just had a whole issue
about human rights stuff. So we're not saying China is
a good country. We're not saying everything they do is great. However,
the pushback that was getting to the US is entertaining.
(23:04):
Now I'm the word this carefully because at the very least,
unlike the people within our country and systems and educational
systems and such that are bowing down preemptively because they
are afraid of the repercussions, we have places like China,
who's like few here we go in which they gave
(23:24):
the two hundred and eighty day like passport free option
for people to come in and shop.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I've seen this, and then I don't.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Know about some other people's feed, but some of my
FYP is showing just Chinese importers and I guess factory
people being like, this is your Louis bittanbag.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
It took us. It takes sixteen dollars for us to
make it.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Come and get it literally is the response, as well
as the pushback and being like, oh we don't need
meat from the US, we'll go to Australia. Oh we
don't need oil from the US, We'll go to Canada.
So this is not Oh, this is not working. It's
not working. It's not working. And this whole attitude of like, well,
good people will buy within the US.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Doubtful.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
We don't have the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the workers
anymore because they've been detained or have left.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
So this is not.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Going the way I mean. Again, we're talking to our
own audience. But it's interesting to see the pushback in this.
And of course clothing is not the only category with
ginger tariffs like these either, looking at shoes and toys again,
purses and like all the extras, toilet trees, they're getting
the same treatment.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yes, and all of this, just like we talked about,
is further worsened by things like the gender wage gap
and for marginalized intersections like women of color, there are
a couple of groups particularly impacted, and as mentioned, black
women is a big one. Black owned businesses and products
for black women are predicted to be heavily impacted. This
(25:02):
is compounded by a couple of factors historic systemic lack
of access to capital. For instance, and friend of the show,
Nikki Pourchett Buy from a Black Woman has an article
about black women and tariffs in the US over on
her site. If you want to check that out, I
recommend it.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, I think we're going to need to do like
another episode with her soon, maybe a happy hour episode
which is not a happy hour, but where we are
taking in some adult beverages, because this is a hard
topic that we need to be talking about on a
constant basis, Like we have to have these conversations at
the forefront about the marginalized folks being impacted because that's
what we often ignore and pretend like it's not a
(25:39):
big deal. And as an intersectional show, we're not going
to bypass that. So I think we're not Nikki, if
you hear us, we're coming. Okay, we need to come
and have some dranks. Yes, anyway, So single mothers are
also one of the big conversations via Forbes article, ed
Grisa from the PPI said single parent families, which are
(26:00):
ninety percent women headed, spend about forty percent of their
income buying goods. The high income level, the top ten
percent of the household spend about twenty percent of their
income on goods. If you're doing a TEARFF increase at all,
and especially if you're coupling it with income taxes, you're
shifting tax burden away from the top end and towards
the bottom end of earners, and it will fall mostly
(26:22):
heavily on single moms. Hello, pro birther people, do you
understand what is happening? These people that you have so
advocated that they have to have their have babies, who
have followed through and have fallen into your good graces
are now suffering the most yep yep.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Also, women own businesses have reported having no clarity or warning.
I don't think this is unique to women owned businesses,
but I was reading about women owned businesses in this
case about how they can't adapt because things change daily.
On top of that, they're having to spend hours a
day talking to suppliers. I can really relate to this personally.
(27:05):
When you have like a work crisis and suddenly like
your whole work day is just trying to fix this crisis.
Talk to other people like, that's a huge ask on
your time, That's the whole thing. They also lament the
fact that we, just like I said, don't have the
(27:26):
infrastructure in the US to fill these gaps at the moment,
and it takes longer to put that infrastructure in place
than the administration is admitting. So many say the reason
for a lot of this is misogyny. Surprise, surprise. When
(27:49):
these tariff deals were negotiated, women weren't at the table.
The first US tarifflaws were penned in the eighteenth century
before women could vote, and are sort of backed off
on with the implementation of the income tax in the
early nineteen hundreds. However, they made it come back with
a great depression in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Make
(28:10):
of that as you will. As discussed in our recent
Equal Payday episode, all of these issues compound to mean
women have less in savings, lesser things like travel, women
live longer than men, but have less money to retire,
and now people are worried about things like social security.
You Medicaid their for one k's which women are less
(28:31):
likely to have cuts to programs that help women, especially
when it comes to women with children. After Trump backed
off and put a ninety day pause on his tariffs
borring China, a group of thirty eight women company founders
came together to request the president for tariff exemptions. We'll see,
(28:51):
but I have.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So he's going to give individual businesses like you can
get these items personally to you without like how does that?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
How would Okay? Never mind.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I think it was just kind of a like, let's
think about this, But I don't think he's gonna think
about it. I don't think that's kind of the problem.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
If he does that for anyone, it's gonna be Amazon.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah. Anyway, I do want to say, kind of going
back to the point you made a little bit earlier, Samantha,
there is a much more complicated, broader conversation about fast
fashion and how that's related to this and the rights
of the workers manufacturing these items and people getting fair
pay for things. What It is a conversation that's being
(29:40):
exploited in a lot of this, but it's also a
conversation we do need to include and not exploit like
it is a very important conversation to have. There's so much,
There is so much, and like we said, this was
just a brief overview and it is a rapidly changing
(30:02):
conversation as we're talking about it. But listeners, if you
have any thoughts about this, I would love to hear
personally from other countries about how your tax system works.
But also yeah, if there's anything you want to hear
us dig into more, please let us know. You can
(30:23):
email us at Hello at Stuffwenever Told You dot com.
You can find us on Blue Sky at mosta podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff we Never Told
You for us on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always too our super producer
Christine and our executive producer and our contributor Joey. Thank you,
(30:44):
Thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told You
is directionure of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
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You app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows
Hey, this is Anny and Samantha. I'm welcome to stuff
I've never told you, but if I heard you. And
today is April seventeenth, twenty twenty five as we record this,
which means we just passed tax Day in the United States.
(00:30):
Taxes are so stressful. They are I hate doing them.
I feel like I have to just focus so hard,
get out my dictionary. I feel like I'm being tricked, Like, Okay,
you're telling me that I just don't think I have this,
(00:50):
but you're telling me I do. It's just a mess.
How was it for you this year, Samantha.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So I started in really early because what we usually
get for our job in general went down significantly. That
made me have a panic moment, and I knew with
everything happening with the new administration that I wanted to
get it done as soon as possible with all the
When I got all the documents, and I don't have
(01:21):
as much as many other people say, so we only
have one succinct job I do, and then like a
house and a few other things, and the forms come
in pretty quickly, like the first month. So as soon
as I got them all, I went in immediately because
I was like nope, nope, y'all, y'all can't trick me.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You can't trick me.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So it was pretty seamless and I got everything back
pretty quickly soon after I turned everything in as well
as started. I think a federal was really fast this
year for me. All the headlines started popping up about
all the changes that could be coming.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I was like, yeah, nope, I got it done. Do
you can't get me?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So I felt a little like out of myself, were
trying to get this out the way.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, i'd say all about braggy form.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Sorry, y'all, No, that's all right. Taxes, I usually try
to get them done early, but I feel like I'm
always missing one form yeah, which sometimes is true and
sometimes isn't. But this year I told you, I mistakenly
misremembered when we recorded the audio book and tried to
(02:29):
log that in into my dad and it was like no, no, no,
no no. And that's when I had a wake up
calls like, oh wow, time has really ceased to matter
to me. I haven't gotten anything back yet, so we'll see,
we'll see. And famously I have been famously to me,
(02:51):
I have been audited so very paranoid very, very paranoid.
But today we thought we would do kind of an
overview of some issues with women in taxes and then
women in tariffs, which is a big conversation happening in
(03:13):
the US right now. I would love if people from
other countries would write in about how taxes work in
your country. I'm just curious. But yes, you could see
our past episodes on the pink tax and also I
would say our Marriage and People with Disabilities episode where
we talked about that. But all right, starting with taxes.
(03:37):
Tax Day was a couple of days ago as we
record this, and I wanted to look to see if
there were any issues around sexism and taxes, and of
course the answer is yes, of course it is. One
of the main things I found was joint filing with
the spouse in the US often results in women getting
taxed at a higher rate in a heteronormative sense, because
(04:01):
these rules were designed when women largely stayed at home
while men worked and were largely designed to spare white
men some tax money. Now that women often work along
with their partner, this can mean that women are getting
tax more highly, and it has to do with the
gender pay gap. A bunch of other things, but that
(04:21):
is one of the main reasons. While partners can file
their taxes separately, only seven percent due this leads some
women to decide to quit their jobs and focus on
childcare to save money, which, as we always say, you know,
if you want to stay at home and take care
of children, that's fantastic. That is not a lesser choice,
(04:43):
but it should be a choice, not something that you're
forced into. Studies have found that reworking the whole thing,
are getting rid of this sort of joint filing system
that we have right now all together, would increase married
women's participation in the workforce. Most other countries have abandoned
(05:03):
this system, by the way, but all right, there is
a lot of history behind this. For a long time
in the US, women were considered second class citizens and
married women were required to file under their husband's name.
In the nineties, activists did try to amend this whole
thing or get rid of it, but conservatives claimed it
(05:25):
was essentially an attack on women being homemakers and traditional marriage,
so they were like, no way.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Interestingly, according to miss magazine, single women are hit hard too.
Here's a quote quote. The tax code has been designed
to favor married couples, as former Department of the Treasury
tax attorney Lily King concluded in a paper on the
lack of fairness within our system, She writes, a single
person never pays less relative to a couple, whether married
(05:54):
or unmarried, with the same amount of income as a
single person.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Studies for black folks and gay folks are penalized too,
for largely systemic reasons. I guess I should put here.
I think it's obvious, but we're not tax experts. Uh
so you can there have been, There has been a
lot written about this, and you can look into it
if you would like, but for now we're just doing
(06:21):
kind of an overview. I will say, my dad used
to do my taxes, and it did feel at the
time that like he was the man who understood it
and I could never get it, you know. And I
don't think he was projecting that to me necessarily, but
that's what I was kind of picking up. And also
(06:44):
I don't blame him, but it was the tax return
he turned in that got me audited.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Oh really, I don't think I knew those I thought
you would actually had a technology.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
But but I think that the penalty should have been
very minor. But I moved and I think I missed
the notification and it just builds up if you don't
know you got it. And so it should have been
a minor like he missed it, one thing, he did
(07:18):
one thing incorrectly. It should have been like a two
hundred dollars fee. It got a lot higher than that.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So this is a question I have in which even
not before this administration, but like all of the departments,
especially like things like the tax irs and such, it's
impossible to get to them and you can never figure
out how to try contest anything.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
And everything comes through mail, and.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
If you don't get it, it literally just gets set
back and that's it, and then you get penalized for that.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
That seems absurd. It is, and it feels like a setup.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
It is, and now they're firing more of the RS people.
Of course, when I finally got to an IRIS person
when I was being audited, she was crying and I
was like, oh God, it's gonna be okay. Meanwhile, I'm thinking,
look at this fee. This is ridiculous. It was a
(08:20):
very ridiculous fee. It was horrible. I cried every time
I got a message from the rs, and essentially it
was from like one little error and me moving and
not getting a message, and it was pretty devastating. Like
if I hadn't had savings, that would have really taken
(08:42):
me out. And it wasn't really my fault, right, I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
That's kind of what happened with like student loans and
people's like if you can't pay off it an entire chunk, it.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
Just builds up.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Like I looked back at the amount of what I
originally took out, and it has grown eight times what.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I took out. And by the way, I've been paying.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Oh, I paid for like the past entirety of my
college except for like one year with the pause when
doing COVID, and like it's such an absurd amount that
it went to from what it was to, which is
because I was not as a social worker who got
paid less amenimum wage, could not pay the entirety of
(09:30):
the amount, so it just grew.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yeah, stuff like that, just like this is where it's
a scheme.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
Yeah yeah, oh yeah, because again I'm not going to
give you the number, but Samantha knows it. And it
was horrendous. Yeah, and I should have only paid two
hundred and it was eyewatering how much I ended up
having to pay, And it was just because I didn't
know I had something to pay. I had to hire
(10:00):
a fancy lawyer.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Right. We even had to shell out more money, yes,
to get it settled.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Yes. Another thing that people talk about when it comes
to women and the tax industry here in the US
and around the world, it's largely made up of men.
Also no surprise, especially in kind of more executive leadership roles.
(10:32):
I read somewhere that women only account for about eleven
percent of finance ministers. There's also a whole story about
how there was a Finance global summit and there was
only one woman and she wasn't allowed to take a
picture with the men. So it's not great. That's not good.
Another thing that's no surprise. A nine out of ten
(10:54):
US dollar billionaires are men. So if they aren't getting
properly taxed, or they're aren't getting properly taxed, why does
the gender poverty gap and the gender savings gap? Uh?
And yeah, there are other more complicated ways taxes impact
women too, including how taxes are allocated, what tax funded
(11:18):
programs they go to or don't go to, improving safety
in public spaces, investment into things like domestic violence, childcare,
all of which childcare still largely falls to women. And
a lot of the tax uh blog posts I read
were about this. As you can imagine, those are not
a high priority for this administration, and in fact they
(11:40):
are actively being dismantled. So that's another way taxes impact women.
And of course all of this is made worse by
the pink tax, which we have talked about before. But
the pink taxes when products typically more geared towards women,
are more heavily text or even just products women need,
(12:04):
they're just more heavily taxed, so that makes the whole
thing worse.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Interestingly, I came up on someone who just wrote a
book titled Double Tax, The Double Tax an a giftyman.
I'm so sorry if I said that right, I'm gonna
find the correct way to say, because I'm really interested
in this book. And she writes not only about the
pink text, but how women of color, specifically black women
are doubly taxed on top of that, and then talking
(12:33):
about tarofts.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
So we'll look into that.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
But I find that fact like conversation starting to happen more,
and I'm really glad to that. But it is is
this like eye opening moment of realizing, yeah, this is
gonna affect everyone, but who's gonna affect the most are
black women.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Yep. Yeah, which does bring us to tariffs and so
called pink tariffs.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Okay, a fun name for that too, I know, let's just.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Put a fun name on it. Okay, So again, not experts,
but I did want to put this in here because
a lot of people do get this wrong, including some
people that are running this country. A tariff is paid
by the country doing the imboarding, not the country where
the products are coming from. All right, Okay, so Trump
(13:28):
has long been obsessed with tariffs. He made it clear
all of you CEOs that are now mad, that this
was something he was going to do, something to expect.
And of course the rollout of his tariffs was disasters
and hurt not only the US economy but the global economy.
So he paused them for ninety days, which, by the way,
he had been president less than ninety days when this happened.
(13:50):
Isn't that a fun fact? Apart from the tariffs on China,
which is an ongoing thing right now, but you know,
be cool, it's Okay, be cool. Oh if they do.
If these tariffs do roll out, according to plan, they
are anticipated to cost American households and annual sixteen hundred
to two thousand dollars, but other estimates put it higher
(14:11):
in the three thousand dollars range, which is a lot.
And this is this is a thing I found that
I was shocked and then like, I guess, So apparently
in cells love Trump's tariffs and think they will get
them girl friends. All right, So the Manisphere, which we
(14:36):
did we have an episode on you can check out
that we did pretty immediately after the election, is torn
between confusion and anger at these tariffs. They don't know
a lot of them are just trying to explain them
away or justify them, even as Trump himself is going
all over the place and backtracking and changing his mind.
(15:00):
Markets in turmoil. And then of course I don't know
why we gotta do this, but here we are. A
Fox News host wondered if tariffs could be the ultimate
testosterone boost. Another one claimed that the return of factory
jobs to the US is good because quote, when you
sit behind a screen all day, it makes you a woman.
(15:22):
Studies have shown this. Meanwhile, Meanwhile, the Kirn read something
like Trump's manly tariffs. This is a real thing and
it was a meme, so you can look that up.
Because these are manly jobs. Another big argument is like,
(15:43):
if you can't stomach the turmoil, you're no man. Yeah,
successful men must suffer. They don't have fun. You hustle
except sometimes but mostly no.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Can we also talk about with this level will of
like become a man being the factory, be out there,
use your hands. The black lung has come back. Oh
I just read that because of this has everything to
do with the CDC and the different health departments and
the disease prevention stuff. But in this conversation of like,
(16:22):
beware coal miners who are still existing, who some of them,
chunk of them did vote for Trump. Union people who
are voting and said we should, they didn't. They never
necessarily endorsed Trump, but they didn't endorse anyone else. Like
certain peoples were like, oh no, but definitely Trump. Yeah,
old school diseases, which I don't think they were eradicated.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Like give me, I don't know much about black lung,
so maybe.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
Someone else who does can come at me and let
me know. But yeah, they're talking about reported cases of
an increase or a notable difference of increase in black lung.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Be a man diarly of black log.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, well, there is a lot being written about this
because there's a lot of discourse that's happening within the manisphere.
That is, essentially women are at fault, of course, because
they messed with the quote natural order and they were
having fun. They were ruining men's lives by having fun
(17:26):
and by wanting divorces, and so the discourse is men,
you shouldn't be having fun. This should hurt, and if
you question it, what's wrong with you? It's very much
turning it on, like you can't if you're too weak,
(17:49):
if you can't stomach what this is. But also it's
very funny slash sad how quickly even proponents of the tariffs,
or at least they say they're proponents of these tariffs
fold when reporters are like, but what about automation and
AI won't that and they just can't answer it. They
(18:13):
just cannot answer it. And I'm.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
It's similar questions to what's happening with immigration, Like when
they're being questioned with like.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Well, how do you know this? How are you Why
are you.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Defying the judges? Who has more rules? Should everyone follow
the judges' rules? And they're just like you talked about
lawyers LeMond, like literally no answers because they know it
cannot stand up in true argument, which is also why
like town halls are being very very organized to make
sure that they don't have any opposition. Mtg R Jorie
(18:47):
Taylor Green just decided to arrest all of them and
also pretty much stun gun them for talking.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Yeah, yeah, you don't have answers. There is one clip
that is I mean again it's it's sad, but it's
also kind of funny where the journalist just asked, I
think it's the main tariff guy, Steve whatever his name is,
Well you know who I'm talking about.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
No, no, no, no, the very pale ball dude.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Right yeah, yeah, yeah. She she asked him about this
and he was He just literally kind of trails off
and is like, yeah, okay. Also, I just have to
put this in here. This is not new, but I
(19:43):
ran into it when I was researching this. I love
how many interesting end quotes articles I find about in
cells aren't just kind of traditionalist men or they're they're like,
I want a woman, but women I hate them, all right,
But if she'll have me, then I guess she's fine.
But also I deserve more than her.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
She should be grateful for me. And if she's not
going down to me, then she's not doing her duty.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
It's just it's fascinating to me. It's fascinating and terrifying
how they're like, I want a woman. I hate this woman,
but she'll do okay, great.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
Thank you so much. I love this.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
But okay. That does bring us to pink tariffs. According
to a study by the US International Trade Commission conducted
in twenty eighteen, tariffs impact women and low income people disproportionately.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Right So, a bill introduced in March twenty twenty five
by two US congress women calls for the Treasury Department
to study pink tariffs. This is because since we're all
talking about tears because of Trump, people have pointed out
some gender discrepancies and disparities. For example, a jacket classified
as a men's jacket maybe tax at a lower rate
(21:01):
than a women's checket, same product, more taxes. The proposed
tears are only going to magnify the problem of paint taxes.
On top of that, unisex clothing stands to be taxed
as if they were women's clothes.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Obviously, Yeah, And one of the big arguments people that
are proponents of this make is that men are generally bigger,
so it costs morephabric but the cost that doesn't make sense.
The cost analysis doesn't work out that way. Some quick numbers,
the US imports an estimated ninety eight percent of clothes
and ninety nine percent of shoes. According to the Progressive
(21:37):
Policy Institute or PPI, taxes and tariffs on women's clothing
likely costs women around two point five billion dollars a year.
On average, Women pay three percent more on tariffs in
the clothing category as compared to men. Women's clothes also
are more frequently made with more expensive and more highly
taxed fibers, further driving up the impact of tariffs, and
(22:01):
there are quite a few examples. One that pops up
pretty often in articles about this is that men's silk
underwear is often taxed at two point nine percent, while
women's silk underwear is at two point one percent. For
wool jackets, the tariff on men's is six percent, while
it's sixteen percent for women. Studies from twenty twenty three
(22:21):
found that Vietnam and China globally exported more than half
of the supply of underwear, So again that the country
that's importing the thing is paying the ters, right.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
I think we all know this, and this is there's
this level of like rooting for the lesser evil because
China is not great. They just had a whole issue
about human rights stuff. So we're not saying China is
a good country. We're not saying everything they do is great. However,
the pushback that was getting to the US is entertaining.
(23:04):
Now I'm the word this carefully because at the very least,
unlike the people within our country and systems and educational
systems and such that are bowing down preemptively because they
are afraid of the repercussions, we have places like China,
who's like few here we go in which they gave
(23:24):
the two hundred and eighty day like passport free option
for people to come in and shop.
Speaker 3 (23:30):
I've seen this, and then I don't.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
Know about some other people's feed, but some of my
FYP is showing just Chinese importers and I guess factory
people being like, this is your Louis bittanbag.
Speaker 3 (23:47):
It took us. It takes sixteen dollars for us to
make it.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Come and get it literally is the response, as well
as the pushback and being like, oh we don't need
meat from the US, we'll go to Australia. Oh we
don't need oil from the US, We'll go to Canada.
So this is not Oh, this is not working. It's
not working. It's not working. And this whole attitude of like, well,
good people will buy within the US.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Doubtful.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
We don't have the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the workers
anymore because they've been detained or have left.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
So this is not.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
Going the way I mean. Again, we're talking to our
own audience. But it's interesting to see the pushback in this.
And of course clothing is not the only category with
ginger tariffs like these either, looking at shoes and toys again,
purses and like all the extras, toilet trees, they're getting
the same treatment.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yes, and all of this, just like we talked about,
is further worsened by things like the gender wage gap
and for marginalized intersections like women of color, there are
a couple of groups particularly impacted, and as mentioned, black
women is a big one. Black owned businesses and products
for black women are predicted to be heavily impacted. This
(25:02):
is compounded by a couple of factors historic systemic lack
of access to capital. For instance, and friend of the show,
Nikki Pourchett Buy from a Black Woman has an article
about black women and tariffs in the US over on
her site. If you want to check that out, I
recommend it.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Yeah, I think we're going to need to do like
another episode with her soon, maybe a happy hour episode
which is not a happy hour, but where we are
taking in some adult beverages, because this is a hard
topic that we need to be talking about on a
constant basis, Like we have to have these conversations at
the forefront about the marginalized folks being impacted because that's
what we often ignore and pretend like it's not a
(25:39):
big deal. And as an intersectional show, we're not going
to bypass that. So I think we're not Nikki, if
you hear us, we're coming. Okay, we need to come
and have some dranks. Yes, anyway, So single mothers are
also one of the big conversations via Forbes article, ed
Grisa from the PPI said single parent families, which are
(26:00):
ninety percent women headed, spend about forty percent of their
income buying goods. The high income level, the top ten
percent of the household spend about twenty percent of their
income on goods. If you're doing a TEARFF increase at all,
and especially if you're coupling it with income taxes, you're
shifting tax burden away from the top end and towards
the bottom end of earners, and it will fall mostly
(26:22):
heavily on single moms. Hello, pro birther people, do you
understand what is happening? These people that you have so
advocated that they have to have their have babies, who
have followed through and have fallen into your good graces
are now suffering the most yep yep.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Also, women own businesses have reported having no clarity or warning.
I don't think this is unique to women owned businesses,
but I was reading about women owned businesses in this
case about how they can't adapt because things change daily.
On top of that, they're having to spend hours a
day talking to suppliers. I can really relate to this personally.
(27:05):
When you have like a work crisis and suddenly like
your whole work day is just trying to fix this crisis.
Talk to other people like, that's a huge ask on
your time, That's the whole thing. They also lament the
fact that we, just like I said, don't have the
(27:26):
infrastructure in the US to fill these gaps at the moment,
and it takes longer to put that infrastructure in place
than the administration is admitting. So many say the reason
for a lot of this is misogyny. Surprise, surprise. When
(27:49):
these tariff deals were negotiated, women weren't at the table.
The first US tarifflaws were penned in the eighteenth century
before women could vote, and are sort of backed off
on with the implementation of the income tax in the
early nineteen hundreds. However, they made it come back with
a great depression in the nineteen twenties and thirties. Make
(28:10):
of that as you will. As discussed in our recent
Equal Payday episode, all of these issues compound to mean
women have less in savings, lesser things like travel, women
live longer than men, but have less money to retire,
and now people are worried about things like social security.
You Medicaid their for one k's which women are less
(28:31):
likely to have cuts to programs that help women, especially
when it comes to women with children. After Trump backed
off and put a ninety day pause on his tariffs
borring China, a group of thirty eight women company founders
came together to request the president for tariff exemptions. We'll see,
(28:51):
but I have.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
So he's going to give individual businesses like you can
get these items personally to you without like how does that?
Speaker 3 (29:05):
How would Okay? Never mind.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
I think it was just kind of a like, let's
think about this, But I don't think he's gonna think
about it. I don't think that's kind of the problem.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
If he does that for anyone, it's gonna be Amazon.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah. Anyway, I do want to say, kind of going
back to the point you made a little bit earlier, Samantha,
there is a much more complicated, broader conversation about fast
fashion and how that's related to this and the rights
of the workers manufacturing these items and people getting fair
pay for things. What It is a conversation that's being
(29:40):
exploited in a lot of this, but it's also a
conversation we do need to include and not exploit like
it is a very important conversation to have. There's so much,
There is so much, and like we said, this was
just a brief overview and it is a rapidly changing
(30:02):
conversation as we're talking about it. But listeners, if you
have any thoughts about this, I would love to hear
personally from other countries about how your tax system works.
But also yeah, if there's anything you want to hear
us dig into more, please let us know. You can
(30:23):
email us at Hello at Stuffwenever Told You dot com.
You can find us on Blue Sky at mosta podcast,
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff we Never Told
You for us on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always too our super producer
Christine and our executive producer and our contributor Joey. Thank you,
(30:44):
Thanks to you for listening. Stuff I've Never Told You
is directionure of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, you can check out the how are
You app Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your
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