Tampon Tax

The previous weeks and posts have been ridiculously strenuous and taxing. (Note the pun for the astute reader.) This will break the tension.
Tampon Tax

Is “over exaggerate” a legitimate descriptor? If you exaggerate, can you do more than that? If it is, the letter on “tampon tax” in Monday’s Tennessean (10/1) is an overexaggeration. ( I coined  the word to emphasize its import.) The key issue was that feminine hygiene products are taxed. The impact of this tax was quoted as $1800 per person over a lifetime. The author did admit that the entire cost was not the tampon itself, but did not carry the analysis any farther.

The argument that this is a tax on a vagina was “colorful” or at least descriptive, but highly inflammatory. “Just because they are women, they have to pay more.” Well, the actual complaint is not with the tax, but on the cultural and hygienic constraints placed on females.

The actual “tampon tax” would, at most, be ten percent of the total “lifetime cost.” That would amount to $180 for the lifetime tax burden. Estimating a period of need (excuse the pun) of 40 years, the tax would be $4.50 per year. And, dividing by 12, it would be less than $0.40 per month, or about the price of a cappuccino every year.

Forty cents is not a terribly onerous burden for most people. The cost of ink to print the article was probably close to that. Let’s pick a serious problem upon which to expend our energies. It is pretty clear that the states are not balancing their budgets on the backs of menstrual females.

Maybe we should have Obamacare or Medicaid cover hygiene materials. That would be a more meaningful pursuit, and with a $45 per year benefit, would help poor people to leave poverty.  (Sorry, could not resist.)