Taxation and Gender Equality: Gender Bias of the Tax System and Incentives to Female Employment in Europe and Italy.

Gender equality is an issue that cuts across all forms of public action, not least taxation. This contribution investigates how the tax system negatively affects gender equality. By narrowing the scope of research to the taxation of family income, we focus on the existence of a gender “bias” that discourages female participation in the labor market in different models of taxation. In this scenario, the individual taxation system, adopted by the Italian system and also advocated by European institutions, comes across as the least distorting in terms of secondary earners’ labour supply. In conclusion, a final remark highlights the need to eliminate the existing gender bias, while not exempting the tax lawmaker from the task of adopting, with an extrafiscal approach, adequate measures and tax breaks to actively promote female employment.