Pink Tax and Other Tropes

Abstract

Law reform advocates should be strategic in deploying tax tropes. This Article examines five common tax phrases—the “nanny tax,” “death tax,” “soda tax,” “Black tax,” and “pink tax”—and demonstrates that tax rhetoric is more likely to influence law when used to describe specific economic injustices resulting from actual government duties, as opposed to figurative “taxes” in the form of other real-life burdens or differences. Slogans referring to figurative taxes have descriptive force in both popular and academic literature as a shorthand for group-based disparities, but they have limited impact on law and human behavior. This Article catalogues and evaluates what makes for effective tax talk, in terms of impact on the law generally as well as day-to-day actions on the ground. With this roadmap, lawyers, policymakers and others will be able make more forceful and precise arguments aimed at reforming the law and changing human behavior. This Article makes three principal claims—one descriptive, one empirical, and one normative. The Article first develops a taxonomy of tax phrases based on the object of critique. The classification distinguishes between criticisms of compulsory formal levies, on the one hand, and burdens or oppressions that are akin to taxes, on the other. The taxonomy also accounts for differences among tax tropes based on their linguistic form. Some phrases deploy a single-word modifier for “tax” (“nanny,” “death,” or “soda”) to signify a larger relationship, event, or transaction that is subject to taxation. Other phrases use a single-word modifier for “tax” (“Black” or “pink”) that is strongly associated with the persons subject to taxation.