Bo-tax out, Tan-tax in
The proposed 5% excise tax on cosmetic surgery and other vanity procedures was taken out of the Senate health care bill last week and replaced with a 10% excise tax on consumers of tanning salons. The tanning industry is burning, of course. Critics say it would only raise half the money of the so-called Bo-tax, and they are right.
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Proceeds from procedures like facelifts and teeth-whitening would have generated $5 billion over the next 10 years, where the estimate for skin-frying will only be $2.7 billion. Industry spokespeople say it is a tax against women, because they make up 75% of the consumers who use tanning beds. The same argument was used against the Bo-tax. They also argue that their industry is mostly small businesses already struggling in this self-sacrificing economy. True; we’ll give them that point.
But here’s a big difference: The World Health Organization recently “upgraded” tanning beds to a “Group 1 carcinogenic” category. In terms of how your health is affected, that puts using tanning bulbs in the same category as smoking cigarettes or exposure to asbestos. Scientists around the world are alarmed about the dramatic increase in skin cancer in young women, and research for WHO points to tanning salons. WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) reported, “the risk of skin melanoma is increased by 75 percent when use of tanning devices starts before 30 years of age.”
So, taxing procedures that ruin the skin and kill us, is really better than taxing procedures that make us look and feel better, don’t you think? You see – Congress is smarter than we give them credit for. Sometimes, anyway.
No, Gina, here’s the big difference: Botox has killed people (18 to date) in the US–while no one has ever died in a tanning bed.