Cain Has Another Issue With Women: Taxes

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain's controversial tax plan may cost working women more overall than their male counterparts, writes Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page. It's because women are disproportionately likely to be single parents and to have lower wages, smaller pensions and more medical problems, he writes, citing census statistics.

Whichever way Cain's sexual harassment headache winds up, it takes attention away from his other big "woman problem": His tax plan would cost working women more overall than it would cost their male counterparts.

Because women are disproportionately likely to be single parents and to have lower wages, smaller pensions and more medical problems, according the census, Social Security Administration and Kaiser Family Foundation, among other researchers, they have more reasons to give a nein to Cain's 9-9-9.

Cain's plan calls for a 9 percent national sales tax, a 9 percent business flat tax and a 9 percent individual flat tax. He would eliminate the current individual income tax, corporate income tax, payroll tax and estate and gift tax.

But an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, finds two big problems. One, it wouldn't raise as much revenue as the current system, despite its claim that it would be "revenue neutral." And, two, it would result in a big tax cut for high-earning Americans and a big tax increase for everyone else.

Read Clarence Page's complete column at the Chicago Tribune.

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