Should we tax the childless?

Last updated on: April 3, 2014 at 7:58 pm by Jane the Actuary

Should we tax the childless? 2014-04-03T19:58:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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That was the topic of a click-bait Slate article, ” Tax the Childless; We should slash taxes on parents by jacking them up for nonparents,” which inspired a NYT Room for Debate debate.

The gist of the initial argument is something we’ve all seen before: parents bear a double burden, not only paying Social Security taxes for today’s elderly, but doing the hard, and costly, work of producing the next generation, who will, someday, provide the labor force to take care of the next generation’s elderly, and who will, quite simply, keep the economy functional in the future.

And most other developed nations do have some kind of “child benefit,” and this is less politically-charged than maternity leave benefits, or subsidized or free child care, because it’s universally provided rather than favoring parents who one choice or another in the debate over working or stay-at-home moms.

But — let’s face it — those countries with generous benefits for parents don’t do so because they want to be “fair” but because they’re trying to prop up an unsustainably-low birth rate. This is not a problem we face: whether because the poor have insufficient access to contraception, as progressives might argue, or because we’re simply a more child-friendly culture in general, we have no shortage of babies, and large-scale immigration is growing our population even more. Pragmatically, we don’t need to encourage people to have more children — and, besides, the natalist policies elsewhere don’t seem to make that much difference, anyway.

On top of which, the Room for Debate pieces focus on the poor, and the fact that poor folks need help whether they have a dozen children, the idealized two, or none at all. But they kind of miss the point, anyway: several of the authors take the approach of, “let me tell you about what I want instead.”

Anyway —

my initial thought was, “I don’t accept my kids whining about unfairness; why should we structure taxes around the approach that it’s unfair for parents to have more hardship than the childless?” And various of the commenters (when they weren’t railing about breeders overpopulating the world) pointed out that punitive tax rates for the childless would also ensnare those who are trying to become financially settled before having children. But, sure, I’d love to fill my kitchen with fancy small appliances and go on vacations in the off-season, and I’m producing the next generation, and making sure they do their homework and practice the piano, so maybe all you childless slackers who can watch PG 13 movies whenever you want should pay me.

But then I started thinking about the fact that when it comes to the wealthy, we very much want taxes to be “fair.” We’re always talking about the wealthy paying “their fair share.” So, if we are going to have to raise taxes on the wealthy to balance the budget, maybe children should factor into it.

And — I’m just putting this out there, as an idea, and just a shell of one, not fleshed out — what if our tax brackets were based, not on married vs. single, but on whether you’ve got children, so that, at the upper income levels, childless individuals and couples take a bigger tax bit at a lower level than child-ed families?

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