Beware Accidental Gender Bias in Tax Systems, Warns OECD Expert

Tax policy can help promote gender equality but can also have unintended consequences, such as discouraging women from full-time work, an OECD employment, labor and social affairs policy expert said today.

Speaking at an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development event, Senior Counsellor Monika Queisser said it is increasingly rare for tax systems to explicitly discriminate against a particular gender, but that a lot of implicit bias remains.

• Some tax policies that appear gender-neutral at the outset aren’t gender-neutral when it comes to their impact, she added.
• For example, lower taxation of part-time labor can act as a ...