Taxing Choices

Winner, 2003-2004 Harold Adams Innis Prize for Best English-Language Book in the Social Sciences, Canadian Federation for Humanities and Social Sciences

In the early 1990s, lawyer Beth Symes brought an equality challenge against the Canadian Income Tax Act, arguing that her childcare costs were a business expense. The case ignited public controversy. Was Symes disadvantaged on the basis of gender, or unfairly privileged on the basis of class?

This book seeks answers to those questions through close attention to the Symes case, where class and gender interests clashed over the tax treatment of childcare. It looks at the history of legislative and litigative struggles, the dynamics of courtroom discourse, and the influence of broad social debates about children and the public/private divide. It reveals how frequently the rhetoric of choice, responsibility, and selfishness is invoked in response to women's attempts to place issues of childcare on the public agenda.

Taxing Choices will interest all those who seek to use the law as a tool of social justice but are troubled by the perils posed by competing interests and conflicts involving race, class, gender, and ability.