Powerful forces in our country today seem determined to push all mothers out of the home and into the paid labor force. This is the obvious explanation of the socially unjust system of imposing heavier taxes on parents who care for their own children than on two-income parents who get somebody else to do their baby-sitting for them.
Congress passed a tax law in 1981 which gives an up-to-$3,000 per year tax deduction as a special bonus incentive to mothers who leave the home and go into the paid labor force, putting their children in the care of some other person or institution. It’s called the two-earner deduction. Under present law, the traditional couple which includes a full-time mother is denied the up-to-$3,000 per year tax deduction.
(This two-earner deduction is over and above the child-care credit, which is another tax preference given only to the non-resident mother who hires someone else to take care of her children, and is denied to the full-time resident mother in the home.)
The Reagan tax reform proposal would treat married couples the same, regardless of their work patterns, by eliminating the two-earner deduction. This would terminate the grievous discrimination against traditional families. The New York Times is leading the attack against this change by misleading news stories which pander to the self-interest of the married couples who don’t want to give up their present tax privilege.
The Times led the charge on June 17 by asserting in an alleged “news” story that the Reagan proposal “has become a central point of controversy” and claiming that “Senators and Representatives from both parties have begun raising questions about the Administration’s view of what constitutes a family.” The Times failed to identify anybody who asked such a question, but if anyone did, such a question indicates partisan malice.
The Reagan Administration reform is based on the premise that the Federal Government should NOT be in the business of asking questions as to what constitutes a family, but instead should be totally neutral and non-coercive as between family work patterns.
The New York Times has opened its prestigious news columns to those who want to keep the tax law rigged with windfall tax rebates given to mothers who move into the paid labor force while denying them to mothers who stay home. Having created the “controversy” about this subject with Biased News Story #1 on June 17, the Times followed up with Biased News Story #2 on June 25, and then regurgitated the same stale “news” in Biased News Story #3 on June 30, including the same chart that was in the June 17 story.
The June 25 page-one story was headlined “Part of Tax Plan May Be Rewritten By Administration.” Translated, this can be read as the press organ of the liberal establishment ordering the Reagan Administration to rewrite its tax plan in order to include the up-to-$3,000 per year tax preference now enjoyed by the two-earner couples at the expense of traditional couples.
In the Senate, Bob Packwood is the leading spokesman for the two-earner tax preference. Packwood is the leading Senate spokesman of lobbyists for abortion, taxpayer funding of abortion, unisex insurance, and all the bills so dear to the hearts of the radical feminists, which is why Gloria Steinem is one of his principal fundraisers.
This two-earner provision exposes the crocodile tears which the liberals shed when they argue for tax relief to the “poor” versus the “rich.” The tax preference for two-income couples is really a tax bonus for upper-income versus lower-income families.
The two-income couples who now get the up-to-$3,000 tax preference are primarily those with incomes from $25,000 to $75,000. The traditional-family couples who have been massively discriminated against are principally those with incomes below $20,000. The average one-paycheck family lives at an income level at least $5,000 lower than the average two-paycheck family.
The alleged justification for the current tax preference to two-income couples was that the second spouse’s income moves the family into a higher rate. Since the Reagan tax proposal calls for a top tax rate of 35%, even this alleged justification is eliminated.
The two-earner deduction is costing the taxpayers $7 to $9 billion per year. It should be eliminated now, not just because it is costly, but because it is unjust and highly discriminatory against some 14 million American families. It should be contrary to social policy for the Federal Government to offer cash incentives to mothers to leave their homes so someone else will have to care for their own children.
