Tax Talk

* Of Washington University Law School, St. Louis. 1 Rebecca Johnson, Taxing Choices: The Intersection of Class, Gender, Parenthood, and the Law (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002). 2 [1993] 4 SCR 695. 3 Johnson, supra note 1, at 3-53. Rebecca Johnson’s impressive new book, Taxing Choices: The Intersection of Class, Gender, Parenthood, and the Law,1 is ambitious. In the book, Johnson explores the debate over child care in the context of Symes v. Canada,2 and a brief outline of the book demonstrates the broad array of issues and topics that she tackles. In part I, Johnson investigates feminist theory, tax theory, and Michel Foucault’s theory of power. She then details the history of the child-care debate, undertakes a comparative analysis of US and Canadian statutory and constitutional questions on the topic of child care, discusses the legal issues that litigants will face in seeking a deduction for child-care expenses, explores the possible strategies for addressing these issues, and explains the controversies that arose when Elizabeth Symes filed her lawsuit in court.3 In part II, Johnson investigates the various discourses that emerged in the Symes litigation (including feminist, sociological, liberal, individualist, conservative, patriarchal, and economic-capitalist), argues that understanding language and words is important for understanding diverse communities, and then tracks the Symes C O N T E N T S