family earner). For all other tax breaks both the number of cases that were eligible for the tax reductions as well as the average amount of the reduction was higher for men than for women. This has to do with the fact that the system of tax breaks has been oriented towards the normal full time earner and thus women who are often in part-time and lower paid jobs were not eligible. In some cases there have been subsequent changes to the tax breaks system. An important case is the redesign of deductibles for long commuting to work, which was redesigned in order to make sure that part-time workers are eligible (at least for part of the deductible). Not only income taxation and social security payments have a gender impact, the overall tax structure has a considerable impact on gender that has to be taken into account. For example, due to their lower income women tend to spend a larger share of their income on consumption and therefore an increase in indirect taxation, such as Value Added Tax, will have a larger impact on women. Complementary analysis by the Austrian civil society group Watch Group Gender and Public Finance (Watch Group 2010) highlighted additional gender biases in the Austrian income taxation system. It has been highlighted, for example, that in spite of the system of individual tax filing in Austria (which is contrary to the split system or joint filing for couples, which has negative incentives for women to enter the labour market) there are remaining elements of family taxation. This element of family taxation was even enlarged during the period of the centre/right government coalition through the 2004/05 tax reform. The main feature of it is a tax break for couples (so-called ‘Alleinverdiener-Absetzbetrag’) if one partner is earning very little or nothing. The lower income limit for one person is higher for couples with children. This tax break actually increases net income for men, while for women it constitutes a financial incentive to remain in very low paid jobs below the limit in order not to lose the tax break. In addition, this form of tax break leads to a situation where, depending on the model of sharing of paid and unpaid work in the household, families receive different amounts of support for children. While the traditional model of a male earner or male earner and small, below the threshold, female earner couple that have 3 children receives about 900 Euros annually, couples without children receive around 360 Euros. However, dual earner couples are not eligible for this type of tax break. Thus, this constitutes a large incentive for the small earner (usually the woman) not to go beyond the threshold, with negative consequences of not having an independent income and especially large consequences in terms of having little or no old-age pension rights. This is only one example of the detailed analysis needed to uncover gender biases in income taxation. Example of gender disaggregated analysis of indirect taxation: analysing excise taxes in the United Kingdom The example from the United Kingdom presented here uses an indirect method of revenue incidence analysis, due to a lack of data. It is included here as an interesting example of how to analyse indirect taxes from a gender perspective. The Women’s Budget Group (WBG) in the United Kingdom, a civil society group with a strong research focus, has put forward ground breaking work on analysing indirect taxes from a gender perspective.
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Textbook for Universities