Deducting My Salad

The subway train was deserted this morning, and my phone has not rung once. I assume that everyone is finishing his or her taxes. I filed online and on time, learning a hard lesson after getting stung by not filing the year I earned $11,000 while living in San Francisco. I was either too disorganized or I figured that nobody would bother with an $11,000 annual income, but later I ended up paying substantial penalties.

Tax politics are a gruesome game and a messaging morass. On this day every year, with either Republicans or Democrats at the helm, I am always feeling financially outsmarted and overtaxed. So if I can’t figure out which politicians have my back, I began to wonder, which organizations are advocating for my financial future?

For the last few years ago the National Council of Women’s Organizations and other feminist groups have gone toe-to-toe with Republicans over social security privatization. It used to be that housewives got severely penalized for the years they did not spend in the workforce. Then, married couples were allowed to collect social security based on either income, so the stay-at-home Mom still got benefits equal to her go-to-work husband. Since most husbands earned more than wives, this was an important economic equalizer for women’s right proponents.

The anti-privatization movement has not found its messaging sweet spot in feminist politics. Even press release headlines are wonky and it takes some digging to figure out the bottom line. In short, though, feminists seem to be advocating for the following:

- A “Family Service Credit” to boost social security payments for stay-at-home spouses;
- In a nod to the divorce rate, dropping the number of years of required marriage from 10 to 7 before eligibility for tax savings kicks in;
- An increase in the amount of benefits given to widows;
- An increase in benefits for disabled widows and divorced disabled spouses.

All this leaves unmarried women (including me) in the same retirement morass, given the gender wage gap that persists. I’m happy to support the cause of married or divorced-after-long-marriages women. Nevertheless, I kept digging to find someone helping my personal tax dilemma.

I checked out the National Association of Women Business Owners website. As it turns out, small businesses, which are dominated by women, get the short end of tax deductions compared to big businesses, which are dominated by men. For example, I can attest to the fact that small businesses rely much more on meals and entertainment for “marketing”, compared to the big ad campaigns run by large corporations. However, big corporations get to deduct 100% of their ad campaigns while small businesses get to deduct only 50% of our business lunches. This doesn’t even seem fiscally sensible - wouldn’t Washington rather have a share of multimillion-dollar ad campaigns instead of 50% of my Cobb Salad?

Still, I didn’t feel completely satisfied that my tax frustrations were being met. So I next checked out “Tax Tips for Gays, Lesbians and Same-Sex Couples” on About.com. This is a very short entry, which basically says that everyone is one their own, don’t even think about gaining a tax advantage from your relationship.

Next I decided to Google myself with the terms: “single mom”, “small business owner”, “Latina”,” taxes”. And guess what? I was taken directly to President Bush’s remarks on the tax cut proposal.

Finally, my profile was front and center. In the second paragraph Bush says, “Latino businesses are growing faster than the government can count. Back in 1997, there were 1.4 million Latino-owned businesses. Since then, the number has been growing by an estimated 25 percent. No one is entirely sure of the total. Your success has left all statistics behind, and America is better off for it.”

Then Bush said the economy looked bad, and since in his view “my job is to lead”, he had a plan. After assuring us that “every big business began as a small business”, he said that his plan would “reduce the marginal rates that many small businesses pay”.

I didn’t even know that marginal rates were damaging me. Frankly, I didn’t know what he meant by “marginal rate”. But upon further Googling, I figured out that the anti-marginal rate people were also worried about the amount of my Cobb Salad that I could deduct. It turns out these Bush-style tax advocates wanted to let me deduct 80% of my salad, not the radical 100% proposed by the National Association of Women Business Owners.

With that, I concluded my tax research and decided to take advantage of the quiet phone and go to lunch. Which is not tax deductible, not even if I were married for a decade and at the helm of a very large business.