The state assembly voted yesterday to toss the tampon tax — an unfair holdover from an era of creaky patriarchy that is fading out of view — into the trash bin, and the governor has pledged to approve it. It’ll take effect next tax quarter, so that means as soon as June 1, the 4 percent tax for regular things a human body does once a month could be no more. Here’s some things that were exempt from the tax already btw, according to the Daily News: Rogaine, foot powder, dandruff shampoo, ChapStick, facial wash, adult diapers and incontinence pads.
“Moving this legislation forward is a win for consumers and it’s a win for women who have largely shouldered the burden of the tax for generations,” the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Senator Susan Serino, said in a statement, according to NBC.
Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and New Jersey already took the step of exempting tampons and pads from the tax.
“Repealing this regressive and unfair tax on women is a matter of social and economic justice,” Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement on Wednesday. “I look forward to signing it into law.”
Tampon availability was a pertinent enough topic to be an major plot point for a Broad City episode this season. Laundry and pinball hub Sunshine Laundromat put Plan B and tampons in a vending machine earlier this year as a joke, not a political statement — which led Sam to ask: why not make it a political statement?
Gender pricing is a thing that goes beyond hygiene products. Should everyone be saving thousands of dollars and tons of waste by switching to menstrual cups anyway? I don’t have a vagina so I don’t know! I do know that we live in a culture that fetishizes birth and motherhood so much but for so long refused to do anything to actually support mothers or their health, so here’s one for the win column.
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