Bunch of Dudes to Decide If Utah Should Tax Tampons
The relatively conservative state of Utah will introduce to committee today a bill to remove taxes on tampons and other feminine products, following five other states that have recently nixed taxes on such goods. Unfortunately, the fate of the Utah bill rests in the hands of men.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Susan Duckworth, tells the Associated Press, “I’m going into an all-male committee, and I just don’t believe they’re going to have much sympathy.”
Critics of the bill are already calling it, creatively, “the tampon bill,” according to the AP. But tampons aren’t the only products that Duckworth seeks to make tax-free. In order to persuade her male colleagues to consider the bill, she included another category of products that they might need: diapers.
Should the bill succeed, Utah would also have to remove taxes on children’s and adult diapers. All in all, it would save the average taxpayer about $30 a year, but cost the state $1 million in revenue.
Even with the promise of tax-free diapers on the table, Duckworth tells the AP she thinks the all-male committee won’t be convinced. “The chances of it getting out of committee are probably not very good, but I’m not going to give up on it,” she said.
