As a consequence, we should tax the income from men's labor at relatively higher rates than that from women's labor, because the resulting labor-market distortions would thereby be lessened. But optimal tax theory describes how the world should work, not how it does work. Thus, we are left with a puzzle. In the real world we observe a tax system in which income from the labor of men, as primary wage earners, is taxed at lower rates than income from the labor of secondary earners and hence labor-supply distortions are not minimized. In a pleasantly feminist tone, McCaffery argues that women ultimately bear a disproportionate burden of the tax as well as a disproportionate burden of all household production activities.
Child care is one example.
Typically, either a woman directly bears the burden of child care or indirectly bears the burden because arranging for care falls on her shoulders. Other household activities can be described similarly. This reviewer would not disagree with McCaffery on this point. The final questions considered by McCaffery are simultaneously the most interesting, the most important, and the ones that leave me most dissatisfied with his analysis. He argues that the tax policy is wrong whether viewed from an accounting perspective or from an economics perspective.