No, the Government Isn’t Taxing Your Period

The New York state senate this week unanimously passed a bill to eliminate a 4 percent sales tax on feminine-hygiene products, citing gender bias.

Similar bills have been introduced in Illinois, Utah, Ohio, California, Michigan, Connecticut, and Wisconsin, seven of the 40 states that enforce sales tax on tampons and pads.

Women’s groups and progressive media have been propelling the conversation about the so-called tampon tax, which, critics say, unfairly targets women.

In an editorial last fall, Cosmopolitan demanded that the government “stop fining women for having ovaries.” The website Fusion was in a huff, saying states that apply sales tax to feminine-hygiene products “charge women for having a period.” And Upworthy blamed the “menstruation taboo,” saying that “access to sanitary products is a right, not a luxury.”

Naturally, President Obama gave his take, saying, in an interview with YouTuber Ingrid Nilsen, that he had “no idea why states would tax [feminine-hygiene products] as luxuries.” His guess? Because “men were making the laws.”

In March, five women filed a lawsuit against the New York state tax department and its commissioner, Jerry Boone, calling the sales tax on tampons a “vestige of another era,” claiming it violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment, and even demanding that the defendants return the “many millions of dollars they took illegally at the expense of women’s health,” which court documents estimated to total about $14 million.

California assembly member Cristina Garcia, who introduced the bill to strike down the “tampon tax” in her state, said in a statement that the tax was doubly unjust because of the (mythical) “pay gap.”

The consensus on the left seems to be that the only reason states put sales tax on tampons is to punish women for having periods. The tax affects only women (and some trans men, The Mary Sue helpfully clarifies) and is therefore unlawfully discriminatory.

But is a sales tax on tampons and pads really a secret ploy by elected men in power to keep periods taboo and women financially oppressed, as critics would have us believe?

Probably not.

State sales-tax laws are incredibly complicated, and the definition of tax-exempt “necessities” varies from state to state. There is no hard and fast rule, such as “all necessities for all people are exempt.” In New York, for example, coffee is exempt, but bottled water is not. Shampoo is taxable, unless it’s dandruff shampoo, and so are toothpaste, floss, and deodorant, all of which could be considered necessities using the same logic that categorizes tampons as such. A bill was introduced in New York last May by state senator Phil Boyle to remove the sales tax on toilet paper, a product many people would probably consider a “necessity,” but the legislation is still sitting in committee.

Most states enforce a default sales tax on every product unless it’s covered by the state’s exemption laws. Under most interpretations, tampons are not covered by these exemption laws.

The idea that there is a conspiracy to slant sales-tax codes in favor of men amounts to bizarre paranoia, and “candy is tax exempt, so tampons should be, too” isn’t a logical argument, not when there are so many unavoidable purchases that government doesn’t recognize as tax-exempt necessities. It’s not the government’s responsibility to ensure that women aren’t paying sales tax on items they buy frequently.

What the Left’s outrage machine doesn’t seem to understand is that the state will get the missing funds from the tampon sales tax by moving it to other products. You can take it off feminine hygiene products and stick it onto bottled water, but consumers, both male and female, are going to end up paying for it, one way or another.