The triple tax

This series is for those who read "Do You Pay Your Taxes?" and wanted more. The voices in that article asked honest questions. Where does our money go? Why does the system feel rigged? Why do women bear the heaviest burden?

This series provides the answers, one layer at a time. Each piece examines a different dimension of tax justice through a feminist political economy lens. Together, they reveal the architecture of a system designed by the powerful, for the powerful. And they show what it takes to change it.

Some examples reappear across pieces. This is deliberate. Certain mechanisms—presumptive tax, the taxation of necessities, the unpaid care economy, the invisibility of informal workers—are so foundational that they deserve to be seen from multiple angles. Each time we return to them, we see another layer of how they operate.

This series focuses on women. Not because they are the only ones made invisible by the system, but because their exclusion exposes tax injustice most clearly. Men are also excluded, also unseen. And women are not a single story. The market trader, the rural farmer, the woman with a disability—each faces different barriers. Later articles examine these differences directly. Here, we name the framework that holds them together: the triple tax burden.

What is the triple tax?

Just as feminist economics names the triple work burden—reproductive, productive, community—so too must we name the triple tax burden women bear. Reproductive. Maternal. Care.

These are not three separate taxes. They are three dimensions of a single system that extracts from women for being female. They are the ways tax policy, combined with public service failure, creates a lifetime of invisible contribution and visible deprivation.

The tax on being female

Biology is not a choice. But for women, it is a basis for extraction.

Sanitary products. In countries that still levy VAT on menstrual products, the message is clear: your biology costs extra. This is not a tax on luxury. It is a tax on being female.

Sanitary bins. In markets, schools, and offices where no disposal exists, women carry used pads in their bags all day. The shame, the discomfort, the indignity—these are not counted in any budget. They are borne by women alone.

Separate toilets. In schools without girls' facilities, girls stay home during menstruation. They fall behind. They drop out. The lifetime cost of lost education is a tax they will pay forever.

Safety. Unlit streets, unsafe public transport, crowded spaces where hands roam—women pay for private alternatives when they can afford them. They stay home when they cannot. They pay with fear, with restricted mobility, with vigilance that never stops.

Part 3: The Tax System's Blind Eye to Women examines the reproductive burden in depth.

The tax on giving life 

Motherhood is celebrated. It is also a site of extraction.

Antenatal and delivery care. Women pay for check-ups, for gloves, for medicine, for the bed that should have been free. Women give birth on concrete floors because hospitals have no beds. They have paid taxes their whole lives. The system gives nothing.

Childcare. The cost falls to mothers. Not because fathers cannot care, but because policy assumes they will not. Tax deductions default to husbands. Joint filing penalises second earners. Her income is treated as supplementary, her work as secondary.

Career penalties. Time off work, lost wages, promotions never received—these follow a woman for her entire working life. The earnings gap compounds. The pension gap follows.

Immunisation and school fees. When children need care, mothers walk. When schools charge fees, mothers borrow. When children are sick, mothers stay home. Every cost of raising the next generation lands on the women who bore them.

Part 8: The Maternal Tax documents this burden in full.

The tax on caring Society assigns women the role of caregivers. Then it taxes them for it.

Household essentials. Because women are responsible for feeding the family, they bear the weight of VAT on cooking fuel, food, sugar, and basic goods. Because they clean, they pay taxes on soap, detergent, cleaning products. Because they wash, they pay taxes on laundry and dishwashing supplies. Because they care for babies and infants, they pay taxes on milk, formula, nappies, children's food. Because they care for the sick, the old, those with disabilities, they pay taxes on medicines, supplements, and care supplies. Because they manage the household, they pay taxes on water—every drop counted, every bill stretched.

These taxes are regressive. They take a larger share from those who have least. And those who have least are often the women stretching every shilling to keep their families alive.

A friend told me a story. She lives in a high-income country now, where water is affordable and abundant. But she grew up in a household where her mother bought 20-litre jerricans of water that the whole family had to stretch for an entire day. Now, when she sees her children or her husband leaving a tap running while washing fruit or dishes, she reaches out—almost unconsciously—to close it.

The reflex is still there. The scarcity is still in her body. The tax her mother paid—in time, in labour, in vigilance—was passed down like a debt she did not choose.

But the tax on caring has two further dimensions that operate like taxes on women's very existence.

Time tax. The hours women spend on unpaid care work are hours they cannot spend earning, resting, or participating in public life. When governments underfund public services, women's unpaid work increases. A clinic closure means a woman walks further to fetch medicine. A school fee means a woman works longer to pay it. A cut to water infrastructure means a woman carries more.

The state takes their time. It is a tax paid in hours, in years, in lives.

Labour tax. Women's unpaid work subsidises the paid economy. Every meal cooked, every child cared for, every elder supported—this labour enables others to work, to earn, to pay taxes. The economy depends on it. Women are never compensated for it.

When economists measure GDP, this work does not count. When tax systems assess contribution, this labour is invisible. When women reach old age, they have no pension for decades of care. Their labour was extracted. They were never paid. The system that benefited from it will now ignore them.

The weight of the triple burden

One woman bears all three.

The tax on being female follows her from girlhood through old age. The tax on giving life concentrates in her childbearing years but its effects—career penalties, lost earnings—last a lifetime. The tax on caring never stops. It is the water she carries, the food she cooks, the hours she loses, the labour the economy takes for free.

She pays taxes to the state. Then she bears these taxes too. By the end of her life, she has contributed more than any accountant could calculate. The state will have no record of most of it.

What justice would look like

A just tax system would recognise and lift the triple tax.

To end the tax on being female:

• Remove VAT on sanitary products

• Mandate separate, safe toilets in all public facilities

• Provide sanitary bins in all public toilets

• Fund street lighting and safe public transport

• Recognise that the cost of vigilance is real and should be counted

To end the tax on giving life:

• Fund universal antenatal, delivery, and postnatal care

• Provide paid maternity leave that does not penalise careers

• Subsidise childcare as a public good

• End tax policies that treat women's income as secondary

To end the tax on caring:

• Remove VAT on household essentials

• Fund public services that reduce unpaid care work

• Count unpaid care work in national accounts

• Design pension systems that recognise a lifetime of care as contribution

• Stop cutting services and expecting women to absorb the labour

Part 15: The Tax System That Sees Us paints this vision in full.

The question that remains

She wakes before dawn. She cooks. She walks. She pays. She menstruates. She bears. She cares.

She pays taxes to the state. She bears the triple tax too. By the end of her life, she has given everything.

The system will have no record of most of it.

The question is not whether women contribute. They do. Every day. Every hour. Every coin.

The question is whether the system will ever see them. Whether it will ever stop taxing them for being female. Whether it will ever give back what it took.

The triple tax is not inevitable. It is policy. It was designed. And what was designed can be redesigned.

The woman in Kampala does not need a better calculator. She needs a seat.

The triple tax names the extraction. When that extraction becomes violence—when unfair tax systems enable the harm of women's bodies, minds, and lives is explored in Part 17: The Violence.