July 20, 2026 • 32 mins
With Tax day behind us and the onslaught of tariffs in the US, Anney and Samantha dig into sexism embedded in the tax code, pink taxes and pink tariffs in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Anny Anne Smitha. I'm not good stuff.
I never told you product, I heard you, And today
we're bringing back a classic because I'm mad about things,
(00:25):
very personal things. But it's about taxes and tariffs because
it seems I once again have messed up with the
RS and it's just a real headache, I have to say,
and I'm very frustrated by the whole situation. But on
top of that, there's been a lot of news coming
(00:45):
out about these tariffs just completely backfiring and being reversed
and really harming the US economy as a lot of
people said it would. So huh, you know, I thought
we would bring this one back. Yes, please enjoy this
(01:06):
classic episode. Hey, this is Anny and Smantha and what
my stuff. I've never told you production if I heard you.
(01:27):
And today is April seventeenth, twenty twenty five as we
record this, which means we just passed tax Day in
the United States. Taxes are so stressful, they are I
hate doing them. I feel like I have to just
(01:48):
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, But you're telling me
I do. It's just a mess. How was it for
you this year, Samantha?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
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
(02:30):
as much as many other people say, so we only
have one sucainct 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.
You can't trick me. So it was pretty seamless and
(02:51):
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,
I was like, yeah, nope, I got done.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Don't you can't get me.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So I felt a little like proud of myself for
trying to get this out the way. Well, i'd say
all about and braggy form.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
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
(03:38):
log that in into my dad and it was like no,
no, no no. And that's when I had a wake up call.
I was 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
(04:00):
to be 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
(04:21):
happening in 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
can 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
(04:45):
with taxes. 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.
(05:08):
This is because 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 taxed more highly, and it has to
do with the gender pay gap a bunch of other things,
(05:29):
but that 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
(05:51):
lesser choice, 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 altogether would increase
married women's participation in the workforce. Most other countries have
(06:11):
abandoned 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
(06:34):
was essentially an attack on women being homemakers and traditional marriage,
so they were like, no way.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah. 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,
(07:03):
whether married or unmarried, with the same amount of income
as a single person.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Studies fine, 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, 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 kind
(07:30):
of an overview. I will say, my dad used to
do my taxes, and it did feel at the time
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 I don't
(07:53):
blame him, but it was the tax return he turned
in that got me audited.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Oh really, And I don't think I knew. I thought
you had actually had a technology count.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
No, 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
(08:23):
a minor like he missed it one thing, he did
one thing incorrectly. It should have been like a two
hundred dollars fee. It got a lot higher than that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
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 contest anything. And everything comes through mail,
that is, and if you don't get it, it literally
(08:56):
just gets sit back and that's it. And then you
get lives for that. That seems absurd.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
It is.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It feels like a setup.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
It is, and now they're firing more of the IRS people.
Of course, when I finally got to an IRS 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
(09:28):
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
(09:51):
me out. And it wasn't really my fault.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Right, I mean, that's kind of what happened with like
student loans and people. Was like, if you can't pay
off it an entire chunk, it just builds up. Like
I looked back at the amount of what I originally
took out, and it has grown eight times what I
took out. And by the way, I've been paying. Oh,
(10:17):
I paid for like the past entirety of my college
except for like one year with the pause when during COVID,
and like, it's such an absurd amount that it went
to from what it was to which because I was
not as a social worker who got paid less amenimum wage,
(10:37):
could not pay the entirety of the amount, so it
just grew. Yeah, stuff like that, just like this is
where it's a scheme.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
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.
It was eyewatering how much I ended up having to pay.
And it was just because I didn't know I had
(11:06):
something to pay and I had to hire a fancy lawyer.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Right, we even had to shell out more money, yes,
to get it settled.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
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.
(11:41):
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
(12:03):
US dollar billionaires are men. So if they aren't getting
properly taxed or their investments aren't getting properly taxed, why
does the gender poverty gap and the gender savings gap?
And yeah, there are other more complicated ways taxes impact
women too, including how taxes are allocated, what tax funded
(12:27):
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
(12:49):
are actively being dismantled. So that's another way taxes impact women.
And of course all of this is made where by
the pink tax, which we have talked about before, that
the pink taxes when products typically more geared towards women,
are more heavily text or even just products women need,
(13:13):
They're just more heavily taxed, so that makes the whole
thing worse.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Interestingly, I came up on someone who just wrote a
book titled Double Tax, The Double Tax an a gifty Guman.
I'm so sorry if I said that, right, I'm gonna
find the correct way to say it, because I'm really
interested in this book as she writes not only about
the pink tax, but how women of color, specifically black
women are doubly tax on top of that, and then
(13:41):
talking about tarots. So we'll look into that. 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 (13:58):
Yep. Yeah, which does bring us to tariffs and so
called pink tariffs.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, still got a fun name for that too.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I know, let's just put a fun name on it. Okay,
So again, no 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,
(14:34):
so Trump 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 him for ninety days, which,
(14:56):
by the way, he had been president less than ninety
days when this happened. Isn't that a fun fact? Apart
from the tariffs on China, which is an ongoing thing
right now. But you know it be cool. It's okay,
be cool. So 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,
(15:19):
but other estimates put it higher 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 for its
(15:39):
all right. So the manisphere, which we 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 trying to explain them away or justify them,
(16:03):
even as Trump himself is going all over the place
and backtracking and changing his mind. The market's 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
(16:25):
US is good because quote, when you sit behind a
screen all day, it makes you a woman. 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
(16:48):
are manly jobs. Another big argument is like, 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 (17:07):
Can we also talk about with this level of like
become a man being the factory, be out there, use
your hands, that black lung has come back. Oh yeah,
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,
(17:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
They didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
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. Like,
give me, I don't know much about black lung, so
maybe 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
(18:05):
black lag. Be a man diarly of black law.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
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
(18:34):
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,
(18:58):
if you can't stomach what this is. But also it's
very funny slash sad how quickly even proponents of these 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
(19:21):
just cannot answer it. And I'm.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
As similar questions to what's happening with immigration, like when
they're being questioned with like, well, how do you know this?
Why are you defying the judges? Who has more rules?
Should everyone follow the judges' rules? And they're just like
you talked about lawyers lemonate it like literally no answers
because they know it cannot stand up in true argument,
(19:48):
which is also why like town halls are being very
very organized to make sure that they don't have any opposition.
MTG Marjorie Taylor Green just decided to arrest all of them,
and they also pretty much stun gun them for talking.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
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 journal is just asked.
I think it's the main tariff guy, Steve whatever his
name is, well you know who I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
No, no, no, no, the very pale ball dude.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Also, I just have to put this in here. This
is not new, but I ran into it when I
was researching this. I love how many interesting end quotes
articles I find about in cells are just kind of
traditionalist men or they're like I want a woman, but
women I hate them, all right, but if she'll have me,
(21:09):
then I guess she's fine. But also I deserve more
than her. She should be.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Grateful for me, and if she's not bowing down to me,
then she's not doing her duty.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Okay, great, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I love this, 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. Right.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
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 than
(22:10):
a women's jacket, 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. Obviously.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, And one of the big arguments people that are
proponents of this make is that men are generally bigger,
so it costs morphabic. But the cop 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
(22:46):
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
(23:10):
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
(23:30):
found that Vietnam and China globally exported more than half
of the supply of underwear. So again, that's the country
that's importing the thing is paying the terrors.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Right. 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 and write stuff. So we're not saying
(24:01):
China is good country. We're not saying everything they do
is great. However, the pushback they're giving to the US
is entertaining. Now I'm on 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
(24:22):
down preemptively because they are afraid of the repercussions. We
have places like China, who's like a few here we
go in which they gave the two hundred and eighty
day like passport free option for people to come in
and shop. I've seen this, and then I don't know
(24:43):
about some of other people's feed, but some of my
FYP is showing just Chinese importers and I guess factory
people be like, this is your Louis vittanbag. It took us.
It takes sixteen dollars for us to make it. Come
and get it. Literally, is the response, as well as
(25:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
It's not working.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And this whole attitude of like well, good people will
buy within the US. Doubtful.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
We don't have the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the workers
anymore because they've been detained or have left. So this
is not 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,
(25:46):
toilet trees, they're getting the same treatment.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
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
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 is
(26:11):
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 (26:27):
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
(26:48):
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, at
Greaser from the PPI said single parent families, which are
(27:08):
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 teariff 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
(27:31):
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 (27:54):
Also, women own businesses have reported having no clarity or warning.
I don't think this 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, when
(28:14):
you have like a work crisis and suddenly like your
whole workday 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 infrastructure in the
(28:37):
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 these tariff
(28:58):
deals were negotiated, women weren't at the table. The first
US tariff laws 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 of
(29:19):
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 likely
(29:40):
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, but
(30:00):
I have.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
So he's going to give individual businesses like you can
get these items personally to you without like, how does that?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
How would okay? 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 problem.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
If he does that for anyone, it's gonna be Amazon.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
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
(30:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
There's so much.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
There is so much, and like we said, this was
just a brief overview and it is a rapidly changing
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.
(31:24):
But also, yeah, if there's anything you want to hear
us dig into more, please let us know. You can
email us at Hello at stuffwenever told you dot com
you can find us on Blue Sky at momstap podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff we Never told
You for us on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
(31:44):
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always too, our saper producer Christine,
our executive producer, and our contributor Joey. Thank you. Thanks
to you for listening stuff I've Never told you Us
direction of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, you can check out the how are You apps,
Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Hey, this is Anny Anne Smitha. I'm not good stuff.
I never told you product, I heard you, And today
we're bringing back a classic because I'm mad about things,
(00:25):
very personal things. But it's about taxes and tariffs because
it seems I once again have messed up with the
RS and it's just a real headache, I have to say,
and I'm very frustrated by the whole situation. But on
top of that, there's been a lot of news coming
(00:45):
out about these tariffs just completely backfiring and being reversed
and really harming the US economy as a lot of
people said it would. So huh, you know, I thought
we would bring this one back. Yes, please enjoy this
(01:06):
classic episode. Hey, this is Anny and Smantha and what
my stuff. I've never told you production if I heard you.
(01:27):
And today is April seventeenth, twenty twenty five as we
record this, which means we just passed tax Day in
the United States. Taxes are so stressful, they are I
hate doing them. I feel like I have to just
(01:48):
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, But you're telling me
I do. It's just a mess. How was it for
you this year, Samantha?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
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
(02:30):
as much as many other people say, so we only
have one sucainct 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.
You can't trick me. So it was pretty seamless and
(02:51):
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,
I was like, yeah, nope, I got done.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Don't you can't get me.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
So I felt a little like proud of myself for
trying to get this out the way. Well, i'd say
all about and braggy form.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
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
(03:38):
log that in into my dad and it was like no,
no, no no. And that's when I had a wake up call.
I was 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
(04:00):
to be 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
(04:21):
happening in 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
can 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
(04:45):
with taxes. 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.
(05:08):
This is because 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 taxed more highly, and it has to
do with the gender pay gap a bunch of other things,
(05:29):
but that 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
(05:51):
lesser choice, 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 altogether would increase
married women's participation in the workforce. Most other countries have
(06:11):
abandoned 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
(06:34):
was essentially an attack on women being homemakers and traditional marriage,
so they were like, no way.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Yeah. 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,
(07:03):
whether married or unmarried, with the same amount of income
as a single person.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Studies fine, 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, 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 kind
(07:30):
of an overview. I will say, my dad used to
do my taxes, and it did feel at the time
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 I don't
(07:53):
blame him, but it was the tax return he turned
in that got me audited.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Oh really, And I don't think I knew. I thought
you had actually had a technology count.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
No, 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
(08:23):
a minor like he missed it one thing, he did
one thing incorrectly. It should have been like a two
hundred dollars fee. It got a lot higher than that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
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 contest anything. And everything comes through mail,
that is, and if you don't get it, it literally
(08:56):
just gets sit back and that's it. And then you
get lives for that. That seems absurd.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
It is.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It feels like a setup.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
It is, and now they're firing more of the IRS people.
Of course, when I finally got to an IRS 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
(09:28):
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
(09:51):
me out. And it wasn't really my fault.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Right, I mean, that's kind of what happened with like
student loans and people. Was like, if you can't pay
off it an entire chunk, it just builds up. Like
I looked back at the amount of what I originally
took out, and it has grown eight times what I
took out. And by the way, I've been paying. Oh,
(10:17):
I paid for like the past entirety of my college
except for like one year with the pause when during COVID,
and like, it's such an absurd amount that it went
to from what it was to which because I was
not as a social worker who got paid less amenimum wage,
(10:37):
could not pay the entirety of the amount, so it
just grew. Yeah, stuff like that, just like this is
where it's a scheme.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
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.
It was eyewatering how much I ended up having to pay.
And it was just because I didn't know I had
(11:06):
something to pay and I had to hire a fancy lawyer.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Right, we even had to shell out more money, yes,
to get it settled.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
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.
(11:41):
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
(12:03):
US dollar billionaires are men. So if they aren't getting
properly taxed or their investments aren't getting properly taxed, why
does the gender poverty gap and the gender savings gap?
And yeah, there are other more complicated ways taxes impact
women too, including how taxes are allocated, what tax funded
(12:27):
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
(12:49):
are actively being dismantled. So that's another way taxes impact women.
And of course all of this is made where by
the pink tax, which we have talked about before, that
the pink taxes when products typically more geared towards women,
are more heavily text or even just products women need,
(13:13):
They're just more heavily taxed, so that makes the whole
thing worse.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Interestingly, I came up on someone who just wrote a
book titled Double Tax, The Double Tax an a gifty Guman.
I'm so sorry if I said that, right, I'm gonna
find the correct way to say it, because I'm really
interested in this book as she writes not only about
the pink tax, but how women of color, specifically black
women are doubly tax on top of that, and then
(13:41):
talking about tarots. So we'll look into that. 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 (13:58):
Yep. Yeah, which does bring us to tariffs and so
called pink tariffs.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Okay, still got a fun name for that too.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
I know, let's just put a fun name on it. Okay,
So again, no 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,
(14:34):
so Trump 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 him for ninety days, which,
(14:56):
by the way, he had been president less than ninety
days when this happened. Isn't that a fun fact? Apart
from the tariffs on China, which is an ongoing thing
right now. But you know it be cool. It's okay,
be cool. So 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,
(15:19):
but other estimates put it higher 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 for its
(15:39):
all right. So the manisphere, which we 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 trying to explain them away or justify them,
(16:03):
even as Trump himself is going all over the place
and backtracking and changing his mind. The market's 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
(16:25):
US is good because quote, when you sit behind a
screen all day, it makes you a woman. 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
(16:48):
are manly jobs. Another big argument is like, 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 (17:07):
Can we also talk about with this level of like
become a man being the factory, be out there, use
your hands, that black lung has come back. Oh yeah,
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,
(17:31):
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.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
They didn't.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
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. Like,
give me, I don't know much about black lung, so
maybe 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
(18:05):
black lag. Be a man diarly of black law.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
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
(18:34):
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,
(18:58):
if you can't stomach what this is. But also it's
very funny slash sad how quickly even proponents of these 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
(19:21):
just cannot answer it. And I'm.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
As similar questions to what's happening with immigration, like when
they're being questioned with like, well, how do you know this?
Why are you defying the judges? Who has more rules?
Should everyone follow the judges' rules? And they're just like
you talked about lawyers lemonate it like literally no answers
because they know it cannot stand up in true argument,
(19:48):
which is also why like town halls are being very
very organized to make sure that they don't have any opposition.
MTG Marjorie Taylor Green just decided to arrest all of them,
and they also pretty much stun gun them for talking.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
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 journal is just asked.
I think it's the main tariff guy, Steve whatever his
name is, well you know who I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
No, no, no, no, the very pale ball dude.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
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.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Also, I just have to put this in here. This
is not new, but I ran into it when I
was researching this. I love how many interesting end quotes
articles I find about in cells are just kind of
traditionalist men or they're like I want a woman, but
women I hate them, all right, but if she'll have me,
(21:09):
then I guess she's fine. But also I deserve more
than her. She should be.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Grateful for me, and if she's not bowing down to me,
then she's not doing her duty.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Okay, great, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
I love this, 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. Right.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
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 than
(22:10):
a women's jacket, 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. Obviously.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Yeah, And one of the big arguments people that are
proponents of this make is that men are generally bigger,
so it costs morphabic. But the cop 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
(22:46):
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
(23:10):
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
(23:30):
found that Vietnam and China globally exported more than half
of the supply of underwear. So again, that's the country
that's importing the thing is paying the terrors.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
Right. 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 and write stuff. So we're not saying
(24:01):
China is good country. We're not saying everything they do
is great. However, the pushback they're giving to the US
is entertaining. Now I'm on 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
(24:22):
down preemptively because they are afraid of the repercussions. We
have places like China, who's like a few here we
go in which they gave the two hundred and eighty
day like passport free option for people to come in
and shop. I've seen this, and then I don't know
(24:43):
about some of other people's feed, but some of my
FYP is showing just Chinese importers and I guess factory
people be like, this is your Louis vittanbag. It took us.
It takes sixteen dollars for us to make it. Come
and get it. Literally, is the response, as well as
(25:03):
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.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
It's not working.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And this whole attitude of like well, good people will
buy within the US. Doubtful.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
We don't have the infrastructure.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the workers
anymore because they've been detained or have left. So this
is not 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,
(25:46):
toilet trees, they're getting the same treatment.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
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
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 is
(26:11):
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 (26:27):
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
(26:48):
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, at
Greaser from the PPI said single parent families, which are
(27:08):
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 teariff 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
(27:31):
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 (27:54):
Also, women own businesses have reported having no clarity or warning.
I don't think this 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, when
(28:14):
you have like a work crisis and suddenly like your
whole workday 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 infrastructure in the
(28:37):
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 these tariff
(28:58):
deals were negotiated, women weren't at the table. The first
US tariff laws 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 of
(29:19):
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 likely
(29:40):
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, but
(30:00):
I have.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
So he's going to give individual businesses like you can
get these items personally to you without like, how does that?
Speaker 1 (30:14):
How would okay? 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 problem.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
If he does that for anyone, it's gonna be Amazon.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
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
(30:49):
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.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
There's so much.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
There is so much, and like we said, this was
just a brief overview and it is a rapidly changing
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.
(31:24):
But also, yeah, if there's anything you want to hear
us dig into more, please let us know. You can
email us at Hello at stuffwenever told you dot com
you can find us on Blue Sky at momstap podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff we Never told
You for us on YouTube. We have a tea public store,
(31:44):
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always too, our saper producer Christine,
our executive producer, and our contributor Joey. Thank you. Thanks
to you for listening stuff I've Never told you Us
direction of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my
Heart Radio, you can check out the how are You apps,
Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
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