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Like Circus Clowns and Movie Actors, Women Should Deduct Their Work-Appearance Costs
Forero, Isabella
Forero, Isabella
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Forero SAW.pdf
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Abstract
The tax law on the deductibility of working expenses seems, on its face, gender neutral.
A closer look shows that the doctrine fails to account for women’s working experiences, with the
result that working women pay higher income taxes than working men.
Women have historically been confined to the private sphere of the home and prohibited
from engaging in the public sphere, both explicitly and constructively. Though much has
changed in the world, scars of the previous division remain. The law of federal income taxation
in the U.S. draws a seemingly unrelated distinction between the ‘personal’ and ‘business’
expenses of working in the public sphere. Expenses which are ordinary and necessary for the
production of income are deductible, while those whose value is thought to be enjoyed more
personally are not. This doctrinal distinction grows out of a body of law that, in addition to being
drafted almost exclusively by men, contemplated a world in which the ‘production of income’
was taken on (and deducted) almost exclusively by men. Now that women make up about half of
the U.S. workforce, the line between business and personal costs of working may require a shift,
in consideration of women’s working experiences.