There will be plenty of pain in today’s Federal budget for women, but there’s one particular area where the hit will be relatively contained.
That area is in the expected 2% tax increase for those earning more than $180,000 a year.
Why? Because there are very few women actually taking home such salaries in the first place. The capacity for women to earn such a figure is challenged by the a gender pay gap that’s been sitting around the 17% mark for more than twenty years now, and the fact women still occupy just 10% of senior leadership and board positions across ASX 500 companies, according to 2012 figures.
Meanwhile, some female business owners are cracking annual rich lists and becoming household names because of it, but many are still struggling to even pay themselves. Figures released yesterday from MYOB Business Monitor found just 20% of female business owners experienced a revenue increase in the 12 months up to February 2014.
The Australian Financial Review’s 2013 salary survey brings the point about the serious gender imbalance across the really high-income earners home. Of the ten highest earning CEOs — all earning somewhere between $2.55 million and $3.34 million — just one is female, Westpac CEO Gail Kelly.
And yes, Kelly looks set to take a hit. The AFR estimates she can expect to pay an additional $49,000 in taxes under the Abbott Government’s proposed 2% tax increase. Not a significant amount when you consider her reported $2.96 million salary.
When Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s paid parental leave scheme proposed paying new mothers their full replacement wage for six months, to a limit of $75,000, one of the common complaints was that it would see ordinary Australians ‘paying millionaires to have babies’.
We’re still wondering where all the millionaire women are.
That $75,000 cap has since been revised to $50,000. According to some estimates, that seemingly significant drop will result in little savings from the total cost of the scheme, given just 2% of women of child-bearing age are earning more than $100,000 a year anyway.
Women are not earning the big bucks. It’s an issue that results in poverty for some in retirement, or even near poverty and little financial security for those in employment.
But when it comes to taxing the high-earners, at least it’s one area where we don’t get hit.