I know this is a hot take on this particular platform, but I promise it’s not rage bait and I’m asking in good faith.

Here’s my perspective:

I think the way people overemphasize the “illegality” of getting paid under the table is maybe a little out of touch with reality.

The argument always goes: “It’s ILLEGAL! It’s bad because it’s against the law!!” But honestly, how can we take that seriously when our own president (in the U.S., at least) has broken the law repeatedly and is still, well… the president?

I'm not necessarily advocating for anarchy here, but the reality is that a huge portion of nannies get paid under the table, not because they want to “be bad” or greedy, but because it’s their only option to survive. Many are rely on it to stay on Medicaid or other essential benefits (in an industry where employers covering healthcare is NOT the norm) or are undocumented.

There's also a huge population of nannies between the age where they're still covered by their parents' and potentially getting married to someone with health insurance (and both of these are making a lot of assumptions about access to insurance through parents or potential partners in the first place, or if a nanny even wants to get married) who talk about how they just have to forgo healthcare because they can't afford it on a nanny salary and hope nothing bad happens. That's rough.

It’s also frustrating that these nanny spaces overemphasize the risk to the point where parents researching norms on Reddit see it as the ultimate sin—when, in reality, the IRS is not coming for nannies. They have bigger fish to fry. Like, millionaires and billionaires evade taxes at a massive scale.

I get that some career nannies feel this delegitimizes the profession, and that’s a fair argument. But at the end of the day, even if it's not ideal, survival comes first. Everyone’s just doing what they have to do.

There are families and nannies out there who prefer to pay over the table, which I respect 100%, but I feel like we should be cutting people who don’t because their nannies need it that way to do something like afford essential medication some slack. To each their own.

The standard should not be higher for domestic wage workers getting paid $25/hour than it is for the ultra-rich who manipulate the system daily.

ETA: I'm not advocating for under the table pay to be the goal. This isn't an argument that it's preferable to over the table pay for nannies or employers. In a perfect world, I don't believe that. I'm saying there are legitimate reasons people choose to be paid under the table even if it's not ideal.