The XX Factor: What women really think.

When Is a Taxpayer Not a Taxpayer? When She's a Spouse.

So of course I plugged my stats into the handy-dandy wage gap calculator that Trailhead mentioned, which the Clinton campaign has posted on its Web site in honor of Equal Pay Day (April 22, in case you haven't pencilled it in yet) and the results were predictable. Some hypothetical man of my age and race would earn about one-third more than I do, at least according to Clinton's software program, whose calculations seem rather vague and ballparky, to put it mildly. I know this disparity should make me angry, and I guess, in a hypothetical kind of way, it does. But what really irritates me is something else; before Equal Pay Day comes today, which is Tax Day, and despite the fact that I mailed out a check just this morning to cover the taxes on the salary that I do get, the government persists in refusing to call me a taxpayer. No. My husband, according to the IRS, is the only "taxpayer" in our household. I am the "spouse." So for that matter is Hillary Clinton: Sccording to their jointly filed 2006 tax return, H.R Clinton, whose occupation is listed as U.S. senator, signs on the line for "spouse," while William J. Clinton, whose occupation is listed as "speaking and writing," is the official household taxpayer.

It's a little thing, I know, but it drives me crazy, once a year, that the IRS does not update its forms to acknowledge that women, though our salaries may or may not still be lower than men's, do in fact work hard for the money we get; do in fact have payroll taxes deducted, Social Security, etc. We feel like taxpayers, look like taxpayers—are, in fact, paying taxes, but are not considered bona fide taxpayers, unless we make a big deal about it and force our husbands to take on the "spouse" designation. (Actually, the reverse happened in our household: For a few years after we were married, and both making about $2 a year, I somehow was the taxpayer and my husband the spouse, which we both thought was fine, but then one tax preparer found this so disconcerting that he actually filled out the paperwork to have the titles reversed.) The thing is, how hard would it be for the government to move into the late 20th century, if not the early 21st, and change the form to have a Taxpayer A and Taxpayer B? I know that there are lots of important things the next administration will have to fix—the economy, the war, the mortgage debacle—but I hope that somebody, someday will get around to updating this throwback to an era when wives' earnings were considered to be little more than pin money.

 And if I'm not a taxpayer, could I have back, like, you know, all those taxes I paid?