Wednesday, February 23, 2022
In Tax Season, Inexperienced Isn’t The Solely Shade That Issues
Chicago Solar-Instances, In Tax Season, Inexperienced Isn’t the Solely Shade That Issues:
Tax season is upon us, and Dorothy Brown has a message: Inexperienced just isn’t the one colour that issues.
She’s an Emory College professor who paperwork racism in American tax codes. Her ebook “The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black People – and How We Can Repair it” is ground-breaking. True, Uncle Sam desires everybody’s cash. However even in a system that many suppose is damaged for myriad causes, taxes could be punishing due to race.
All through the ebook, Brown lays out how these insurance policies are an invisible mechanism for inequity. On the floor, most individuals don’t suppose taxes discriminate. Taxes are seen as color-blind, however they have an effect on housing, jobs and better schooling. All of which contribute to the racial wealth hole.
Brown went into tax legislation considering she might escape race. As a Black lady, she shortly discovered in any other case. Brown first got here to this work when she did her mother and father’ taxes and understood that the idea of “horizontal fairness” was incorrect. …
Her options are daring and inventive, reminiscent of utterly rethinking tax deductions. With out stepping into the weeds of tax insurance policies, Brown’s analysis accentuates one other level: Race- impartial insurance policies inadvertently make whiteness the default. Nowhere within the tax code is race talked about by identify. And so-called race-neutral insurance policies permeate all kinds of facets of our lives, together with in Chicago.
Intentionality is essential to reversing the hurt of racism and understanding how sure insurance policies solely profit one group of individuals or exclude one other group. With the tax code, the folks making the legal guidelines don’t perceive day-to-day realities of Black People, or for that matter, non-white People. And that may be utilized in nearly any establishment or system on this nation.
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2022/02/in-tax-season-green-isnt-the-only-color-that-matters.html
