Untaxed household labor

Here's an excellent post from Josh Barro on Obama's proposed childcare tax credit for "working" parents... in quotes because of course all parents work, inside and/or outside the home. Barro's point is that we don't tax home labor, so in fact the tax system provides an incentive at the margin for parents to stay at home. A perfect little lesson in Beckerian economics, and even with some back-of-the-envelope data analysis. Nice.