Seminar: Discussions on gender equality within income taxation

”Equality and the taxable unit in income tax”
by Professor Sigrid Hemels
 

Professor of Tax Law Erasmus University Rotterdam Law School, Visiting Professor in Tax Law Lund University School of Economics and Business (LUSEM), and PSL at Allen & Overy LLP Amsterdam. 
 
The United Nation’s fifth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. This goal includes several targets, including to bring an end to all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere and to adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels.

Regarding this goal, the European Commission noted that gender equality is one of the fundamental values of the European Union and that active policies remain necessary, amongst others, to better utilize female talent and to improve the participation of women in the labour market and their economic independence. As was noted in a report for the European Parliament: “Any such ambition needs to be linked with the overall design of the tax system, especially with regard to the position of the secondary earner.(…) Tax systems and fiscal policy decisions affect women and men differently because tax regulations interact with socioeconomic realities”.

At this seminar, the choice of the taxable unit in the personal income tax, the family or the individual, will be analysed as a means to help reach the gender equality goal. The choice of the taxable unit in the personal income tax is primarily political and has important consequences in tax systems with progressive tax rates. It is closely linked to the way in which society regards the family, marriage and the position of women in society and the family. If the family is the taxable unit, it does not matter whether one partner earns all income or whether both earn income. This is different when the individual is the taxable unit. Because of the progressive tax rates, a family with two income earners will pay less tax as both partners benefit from the lowest personal income tax brackets. Therefore, the design of domestic tax systems in addition to gender equality goals on both EU level and international level will be discussed at the seminar.
 
 
Discussants:
Assistant professor Karl Harmenberg, Department of Economics at Copenhagen Business School
Assistant professor Yvette Lind, CBS Law at Copenhagen Business School
 
 
Please register your attendance with yl.law@cbs.dk.
Sign up before 13th of January.
Date: 15th of January 2020, 13.00-15.00
Venue: Porcelænshaven 18B, 1. floor (1.131A), 2000 Frederiksberg (ten minute metro ride from the center of Copenhagen)