They Rarely Clean Up in Their Old Age
Millions of women spend years as domestic workers cleaning up after someone else. When these housekeepers become too old to make beds, they, like most other retirees, should receive Social Security payments. But few do because few of their employers pay the required taxes for household employees.
Bobby Ray Inman, a retired admiral and now President Clinton’s choice for defense secretary, is just the latest Clinton nominee to admit that he failed to pay Social Security taxes on the salary of a housekeeper who has cleaned his home part-time for seven years.
Inman is scarcely the only scofflaw, but he should have settled with the Internal Revenue Service before being nominated. The embarrassing experiences of Zoe Baird, who withdrew as a nominee for attorney general, and Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown have made it clear what is required of every person (political nominee or not) who has an employee.
Baird’s nomination was withdrawn after it became publicly known that she had illegally hired undocumented immigrants to care for her child and home and had failed to pay the required Social Security taxes. Brown failed to pay the requisite taxes for his American housekeeper; he pleaded ignorance, like many others, and quickly made amends. Inman, like more than two dozen other Clinton nominees, waited until after the President tapped him before clearing his employee-related debt with the government. Only Monday did he write a check for $6,000 to the IRS for the back Social Security taxes.
The law calls for payment of a 15.3% tax for every household worker who earns more than $50 during any three months. (The law dictates that the employer pay half and the worker pay half). That of course is an absurdly low threshold. It even requires many parents to pay Social Security taxes in employing a neighborhood baby-sitter. Satisfying the law also requires complicated quarterly filings. Pending legislation would raise the threshold, established more than 30 years ago, to a more realistic level. A House bill would increase the excluded earnings to $1,750. A Senate proposal would boost the threshold to $610. Either would be better than the current level. And to encourage compliance, Congress should make the process of paying the taxes easier; the onerous paperwork must be eliminated.
Paying Social Security taxes is not an act of charity. The law, not to mention compassion, requires compliance. Housekeepers, typically low-income women who do no other kind of work, rarely receive other pensions. The law entitles them to a Social Security check when they reach the age of qualification, but they can collect only if their employers--and they themselves--pay as they go along.
The Inman story provides yet another reminder of the legal obligation owed by all who pay for regular household help.
