All-Male Panel of Utah Lawmakers Votes to Keep the State’s Tampon Tax
No menstruation without taxation.
Quelle surprise! Yesterday, an all-male committee of Utah lawmakers voted 8-3 against removing the sales tax on tampons and pads. According to Al Jazeera, the taxation forum voted against the bill because “they want to make the tax system predictable, and subjective variations on what is or is not exempt could do just the opposite.”
The tampon bill was proposed by Democratic Rep. Susan Duckworth, and follows similar successful measures in states like Pennsylvania and Minnesota. In recent years, there’s been an increasing international call for an end to taxation on essential sanitary items like tampons–Canada eliminated their tampon tax in 2015, U.K. women protested the VAT on sanitary items by bleeding outside Parliament last year, and President Obama admitted in an interview in January that he doesn’t understand why states would tax tampons as luxury items, but that it’s probably because “men were making the laws when those taxes were passed.”
Duckworth estimates that the tampon bill, which would also make adult incontinence products and children’s diapers tax-free, could save some residents at least $30 a year in taxes. Luckily, she’s not ready to give up on the measure just yet: “A lot of times it can take two, three or four years, and we have to be persistent and consistent.”
(via Jezebel)
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