Equal-income black and white households still have unequal tax-paying ability

Evidence

The more I think about horizontal and vertical equity, the more I think we’ve gotten the basic notion of equity wrong. They assume away the impact of societal race-based discrimination. Black and white households with the same income simply do not have the same ability to pay. A black household with the same income as a white household is statistically more likely to need two working spouses to earn that amount, to have less home equity, and to be supporting family members who were overtly and legally prohibited from the same wealth-building opportunities available to the family members of white workers. Those two households are in completely different financial situations, and federal policies created that discrepancy. True equity demands that they not pay the same amount in taxes. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 527

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines true equity as accounting for unequal historical starting conditions, not just equal current income.
• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes the foundational horizontal/vertical equity concepts in tax theory to embed race-based historical disadvantage into ‘ability to pay’
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 527
• XREF: connects to: Racial inequality shapes American tax outcomes, not just marriage, housing, and wages. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 38; Black Americans must adapt financial behavior around a tax code built on white norms — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax…, 531