In several European countries governments have used various forms of public expenditures to stimulate job growth in the domestic service sector. The reforms have mainly been incorporated into labour market policies with the specific aim of encouraging households to employ domestic workers. This raises several from a feminist perspective interesting questions about public expenditure and the relation between care work, family models and taxation in gender and welfare policies. In this article the conflicting interests of policies and legal principles concerning tax reform is shown, which could ultimately undermine general welfare and gender equality reforms. The Swedish experience is contrasted with the development of public expenditure for domestic services in other European countries. Concluding that the introduction of a tax credit for domestic services could be seen as a transformation of the Swedish dual-earner and dual-carer regime, towards a dual-earner regime where care is once again made invisible