Why Are We Paying Sales Tax on Tampons?

[eridani]

Even though I'm too old to care, I still do.

http://www.thenation.com/article/why-are-we-paying-sales-tax-on-tampons/

Recently, during a live interview with YouTube star Ingrid Nilsen, President Obama was asked why 40 states impose a sales tax on tampons and sanitary pads. His telling, if not slightly awkward, response: “I suspect it’s because men were making the laws.”

President Obama confessed that prior to the question he was unaware of the fact that most states don’t exempt tampons and pads from sales tax or otherwise classify them as a necessity. But other global leaders, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls among them, have been engulfed in an ongoing battle over the “tampon tax”—the EU’s Value Added Tax classifies tampons as “non-essential luxury items”—as raucous floor debates, failed votes, and viral protests have unfolded in recent months. The economics of menstruation began making international headlines last summer when Canada succeeded in eliminating its national Goods and Services Tax on menstrual products.

In the United States, too, activists are calling out the clueless sales tax. Generally, states exempt food and other necessities, such as medicine and prescription drugs, but not menstrual products, from sales tax. A change.org petition to US state legislators, Stop Taxing Our Periods. Period. (which I launched, together with Cosmopolitan magazine), has amassed more than 43,000 signatures. In January, California Assemblymembers Cristina Garcia and Ling Ling Chang introduced the first tampon-tax bill of the 2016 legislative session, with notable bipartisan support. California collects over $20 million annually in sales taxes on tampons and pads. Women across the country pay upward of $70–100 per year on these products—and low-income women who can’t afford to buy in bulk often pay a premium for emergency, convenience-shop purchases—which amounts to more than $3,000 over a lifetime of menstruating years.

[itsrobert]

1. I agree that it should not be taxed.

Also, interesting that it appears diapers and adult diapers are taxed too in some states. I wouldn't call them luxury items either.

I was surprised about 15 years ago when I bought a bag of ice and tax was added. Ice is considered a luxury item. I guess keeping your food safe in a cooler with ice is luxury.

[Human101948]

2. Because the rich do no want to pay income taxes...

It is certainly ridiculous that a necessity is taxed, but it's just another thing that is more easily taxed than collecting income taxes and ineheritance taxes from the very wealthy. An example follows--

How Kansas keeps making life harder for the poor

Poor families in Kansas would pay even more in taxes under a bill the state House passed Friday.

The bill would raise the sales tax rate from 6.15 percent to 6.5 percent. Since the poor spend more of their money on basic goods and services, they are likely to be affected disproportionately by the sales tax increase.

The legislation will raise taxes on all income groups, but critics say the increase is particularly onerous for the poor because it follows a series of other demands the government has made on their finances...

....Those changes followed a decision several years ago to overhaul taxes in a way that, over several years, boosted the incomes of the middle class and wealthy but reduced the incomes of poor families, by raising sales taxes and by limiting a provision that exempted food purchases from sales taxes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/12/kansas-is-about-to-raise-taxes-on-the-poor-again/

This chart shows the impact of the earlier tax overhaul:
https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

[Travis_0004]

3. I don't know if this is strictly a womens rights issue

In Ohio, tampons are taxed, but so are bandaids, and OTC medicine. Its not singling women out. The fix would be to eliminate tax on all medical items.

[Ms. Yertle]

4. How about toilet paper?

Should that be exempt, too? What about soap and deodorant, and other personal care items? Also, light bulbs and bed sheets are kind of important, and in a lot of places everyone needs a car to get to work, or to the doctor, or to the grocery store.

I don't disagree with you, at all, but the question is where you draw the line. If you can't tax things that people consider essential, you can't tax nearly anything at all.

[intheflow]

5. The issue is that only women have to pay this tax.

Everyone, of every gender, has to pay toilet paper tax.

[Kaleva]

6. I'm a guy and I pay that tax

I do the shopping and the money budgeted for groceries, personal items and household products comes out of my SSDI and VA pension.

[intheflow]

7. Have it your way: only households with women have to pay this tax.

Unless you're buying tampons to stick up your nose to stop nosebleeds. You wouldn't be paying for the product OR the tax if you weren't married. Argument FAIL.

[LanternWaste]

8. Do you pay that tax specifically because there is a woman in the household?

Do you pay that tax specifically because there is a woman in the household who requires them, or merely because you like to purchase them?