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This chapter explores the gender biases embedded in facially neutral tax laws, focusing specifically on so-called “tampon taxes,” levies exacted on menstrual hygiene products. In most of the states in the United States, menstrual hygiene products are subject to sales tax. Meanwhile, in much of the European Union, these products are treated as luxuries and are subject to the highest rate of VAT. The various human rights affected by tampon taxes include the rights to be free from discrimination, to health, to education, to work, and to dignity. The chapter then considers potential venues and strategies for legal challenges in the European Union, the United States, and elsewhere. Strikingly, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) precedents cited concerning gender discrimination all involve suits brought by men complaining of disparate treatment—much as some of the earliest cases recognizing gender discrimination in the United States were brought by men.

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Civil law regimes in Europe have been cautiously open to the common law trust for commercial purposes, and to some forms of the private trust as well. This openness indicates that the time may be right to issue a warning to civil lawyers about the recent proliferation of highly problematic forms of the trust in the U. S., and to offer an explanation of the dysfunction which allowed these trusts to win legislative approval. Civil law may be less amenable to these forms of trust for reasons of social policy and legal philosophy as expressed in foundational legal texts. Recent changes to EU trust law and to French and Dutch tax law indicate that this may be the case. This article discusses these new trust forms and discusses some elements of civil law which, at least from a common lawyer’s perspective, offer some resistance to them.