IMF's suggestion of a "man tax" (or lower taxes for women)

I thought this had something to do with childcare. I dont think this will encourage women to go back in the workforce [what workforce?]. They creche, childminder, whatever should offer a receipt to whomever is sigining the cheques to be submitted to the tax office/accountant or whomever is appropriate.

Wasn't it worded as "the second earner", which doesn't necessarily mean that person is female.

edit: as I have just noticed 28064212 has pointed it out.

CathyMoran wrote: »

I think the issues are the high cost of childcare and the fact that if someone (male or female) has been away from the job market for a few years raising a child(ren) they will probably need upskilling - the current proposal does not address that.

That is a crucial and ignored point all too often. I dont know about over here, but certainly in the highly competitive job market of the north eastern US, if you take a year out, that is it, when you come back you have to start over, at the bottom. Your skills, your contacts, you everything have expired.

But is upskilling the responsibility of the state? Shouldnt the parent/employee take care of that?

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Absolutely, but without the necessary tax breaks or other incentives for getting educated it really isn't worth it

Shouldnt this be given to the employer to encourage hiring?

iptba wrote: »

People say it is badly worded. But I read somewhere discussing this proposal (can't remember where now - I had a quick Google Thursday night) that the IMF did a study and found that if one increases women's salaries they spend more which the IMF saw as good for economies. Or so this poster said (i.e. I'm going on second hand information). So there may be a reason they used the wording they did.

My experience of organizations such as the IMF, WEF and WB is that they are run by bureaucratic academics and administrators, often with secondary ideological agendas. When they come in, they take the opportunity to 'reshape' the country they are giving aid or loans to, often applying theoretical or experimental economic policies.

Additionally, many of the policies favoured by these organizations have political or social agendas that are not necessarily optimized for the economic benefit of the country in question; women's rights, free market economics (globalization) and (western) democratization are a few of the things that tend to be pushed for example, and you really only need to attend one or two dinner parties with these people to realize how politicized they are in reality - the economic well-being is only a means to the political end, not the other way around.

That they may have done a study that demonstrated the positive benefits of a policy is in reality pretty meaningless. They operate like gigantic multinational bureaucracies and the validity of such reports is often very questionable and subject to manipulation of data, over-extrapolation of models and the internal politics of the organization.

Looking at this, my guess is that the original studies were probably gender neutral, and when they got passed around they got hijacked by political agendas. That adopting a more cost efficient, gender neutral approach (such as making child day-care more affordable) might make more sense for Ireland, becomes a secondary consideration, because that was not what their study was based on. It's not what is being pushed ideologically.

It really comes down to the negotiation skills of the national government that gets aid from these NGO's. If they have little leverage then the economy will become the test-bed for socioeconomic experimentation. They've done it before - Argentina being a case in point.

I think Ireland is in a position to force compromise on many of the wackier experiments, although it would involve the threat to refuse aid and bring ourselves and the rest of the Eurozone down with us. If such brinkmanship was believed, then the EU would place pressure on the IMF to back down on their more ideologically-orientated policies.

Unfortunately, we have a government which at the best of times was mediocre, and at this stage I suspect they're exhausted and ready to bend over if it makes it all go away. Lenihan additionally has had health problems, on top of the stress of the current climate, and if that wasn't enough the government now needs to contend with the dubious loyalties of TD's who will soon be up for reelection and are likely to rebel so as to distance themselves from the present fiasco.

Not that the opposition is any more competent, and I suspect that they will soon draft in another 'media economist' (probably Marc Coleman) to do their economic thinking for them.

In short; bend over Ireland...

They have it named wrong, it should be stay at home parent/homemaker back to work tax break and it should be for parents of either gender, it's sloppy calling it a woman's back to work tax.

Thaedydal wrote: »

They have it named wrong, it should be stay at home parent/homemaker back to work tax break and it should be for parents of either gender, it's sloppy calling it a woman's back to work tax.

It's possible, but I genuinely would not be surprised if they genuinely did mean for this to only apply to women. I'm not joking when I say these NGO's are full of ideological nuttiness that seeks to use countries in their debt as guinea pigs for their socio-economic experiments.

The Mantax was proposed in Sweden a few years back and dropped.

A far more worthwhile aim would be amending Article 41 to give equal rights to men and women as parents.

Sorry but lots of countries dont have any such thing in their consitutions but the issues remain the same, like women and childcare and hits on the career etc, such as the US.

You can change the consitution but it wont change anything. You barking down the wrong manhole.

Thats a bit silly, you either buy into the whole egalitarian thing or you don't and if you do it should be made as simple as possible.

The objection to the codifications of womens roles is as old as the constitution itself some quite impressive names objected to it at the time

Ward explains that women graduates from university issued a protest to de Valera's document. Women such as Mary Hayden, Agnes O' Farrelly, Mary Macken, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, and Mary Kettle refused his backward and regressive description of womanhood along with Article 45 which stated that women and children should be kept from work which they were unsuited for, leading feminists to predict its utility as an instrument in discrimination.

de Valera ignored women, just as he always had.

It's worth noting that one of the most significant dissenting groups consisted of Irish feminists who strongly objected to women's domestic roles as wife and mother being formally codified and inscribed into the Constitution. Margaret Ward, a brilliant historian, explains de Valera's limited understanding of women and his commitment to men's gender privilege in Irish civic affairs:


"The initial impetus behind the proposed constitution was the necessity of establishing the sovereign independence of Ireland, of tearing away the last remnant of the 1922 Treaty Constitution. But de Valera's new constitution was far removed from the liberal-democratic ethos of the 1922 document, being imbued with all the reactionary values of Catholic social teaching, particularly in its insistence upon the primacy of women's role within the family. It echoed many Papal encyclicals, all of which de Valera had studied in detail as he formulated what was to be the climax of his political career. He had refused to let women into Boland's Mill in 1916 and he had disregarded the contribution made by women during the Civil War, finding women activists an anomaly he preferred to ignore in favour of a vision of an Ireland 'whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose villages would be joyous with the romping of sturdy children, the contests of athletic youths, the laughter of comely maidens.' Now as President, he took the opportunity to ensure that women, whether they liked it or not, would give priority to their duties as wives and mothers. He had never wanted women in the public sphere and was going to enshrine these prejudices within the constitution. His attitudes were so well known that no one was taken in by his protestations of concern for women's well-being." Unmanageable Revolutionaries 237-8.

For example, in Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill's "Selected Essays" she discloses that her mother was a doctor who had to abandon her practice upon marriage and lived through a deep depression that lasted 15 years at the loss of her professional livelihood. Article 41 made discrimination against women the norm for most of the twentieth century.

http://dante-andthelobster.blogspot.com/2007/07/irish-constitution-bunreacht-na.html

So the constitution has had and does have implications on peoples lives..

But the world has moved on and we have some say as to what we want in the future. That is why I suggested the Belgian system as it is practical and uses subsidies and tax reliefs applied to childcare.

The application process for state crèches should start in the fourth month of pregnancy when an interview is organised to discuss how many days a week the child with attend and the date he or she will start at the crèche. Confirmation is sent in the seventh month of pregnancy. Every case is dealt with in chronological order.
The crèches are open throughout the year, usually from 7am to 6pm (depending on local working hours), except on weekends and national holidays. The cost varies, according to the family income bracket. The price of private crèches, however, is freely set by the owners.
The financial contribution for official crèches in the Flemish system cost between July 2005 and June 2006 between EUR 1.31 and EUR 23.31 per day per child, depending on the net joint income of the married, co-habiting or single parent household. There is a tax deduction of up to EUR 11.20 per day.
In the French-speaking system costs range from EUR 1.99 to EUR 28.04, depending on household income, but tax deductions of up to 70 percent are also available.
At official childcare centres there are also reductions granted to parents placing more than one child in the same crèche.
Several of the English speaking, international schools offer programmes for the pre-school age child, increasingly with an exposure to a second language. There are also privately run pre-schools similar to American nursery schools, but, as yet, the co-operative nursery school concept has not caught on in Belgium.
Full details on all areas of Belgium can be obtained from the organisations that supervise and set the national standards.
Office de la Naissance et de l'Enfance (O.N.E) (French)
Chaussée de Charleroi, 95
1060 Bruxelles
Ph: 02 542 1211
Fax: 02 542 1261
Email info@one.be
Online: www.one.be
http://www.expatica.com/be/essentials_moving_to/essentials/childcare-in-belgium-1445_8443.html

From a practical point of view I find a gender based tax nasty but an alternative might be subsidised and tax deductable childcare.