For many women, it would be more worthwhile to file Income Tax individually than to file taxes jointly. In 2017, a study concluded that women pay 5 percentage points more with the combined IRS in Portugal.
In joint taxation, couples (whether married or in a common-law relationship) file joint income tax returns.
In this way, the household’s income will be taxed in a single way. However, This system may be penalizing many women, who, in general, receive less.
The conclusion is from several studies in recent years; which once again became a topic in the European Parliament’s fiscal affairs subcommittee this Monday.
Joint income tax taxation means that many women are paying more for their income than if you filed a return alone.
Although Member States do not explicitly distinguish between men and women in their tax systems, the way taxation is designed may contain implicit gender biases.
As explains, these prejudices are often based on broader cultural and economic factors – such as, for example, salary differences.
MEPs admit, based on several studies, that although joint taxation reduces the final tax to be paid by the household, especially when there is a significant disparity between the two partners, it can also lead to a disproportionately higher marginal rate for the holder with the lowest income, who is most often a woman.
Quoted by Negócios, the subcommittee points out that “this tax structure can contribute to wider gender inequalitylimiting women’s career advancement or limiting their long-term economic independence.”
Asa Gunnarssonprofessor at Umeå University (Sweden), defended that EU Member States should move towards individual taxation“including the elimination of expenses and benefits based on joint income and taxation.”
In Portugal
The study ‘Quantifying the disincentives of joint taxation on the participation in the labor market of married women’, from 2017, to which Negócios alludes, concluded that a married woman who files a joint declaration, pays an average marginal IRS rate in Portugal around 20%. At the same income level, if you filed a declaration alone you would pay around 15%.
I.e, women pay 5 percentage points more with the joint IRS.
