Photo coutesy Flickr user Evil Erin (cc).
Dermatologists were outraged when the Senate proposed, as part of its health reform bill, that anyone getting a cosmetic procedure be required to pay a 5% tax. After a weekend of negotiation (and some not-so-gentle lobbying by the American Academy of Dermatology, the American Medical Association, and other medical societies), the proposal was turned on its head, and now it’s the indoor tanning industry that’s steaming mad.
Senate Democrats dropped the 5% so-called “Botax” and replaced it with a 10% tax on users of indoor tanning salons. The health reform bill is still in negotiation, but it seems unlikely the House and Senate will suddenly decide to remove a revenue-raising item -- especially one that has the potential to address a public health issue.
Even Cosmopolitan magazine supports the tax and is telling its readers not to tan indoors.
The tanning industry told the Wall Street Journal that the tax would hardly make a dent in paying for the overall cost of health reform. The Indoor Tanning Association and legions of salon owners in America maintain that tanning is safe and that a tax on tanning is a small business-killer. Many are soliciting tanning customers to oppose the tax.
One salon chain in Florida said the tax would “unfairly hit working women and college students,” and that some 635,000 Florida tanners would be impacted, and argues that the revenues raised by the tax would be a pittance.
Will the tanning tax survive? Will it put a damper on teens’ enthusiasm for tanning? Maybe not, especially if the tanning industry continues with running free-tanning promotions that hook kids the same way give-aways and targeted marketing have with tobacco.
What do you think?
Alicia Ault (on Twitter @aliciaault)
Associate Editor, Practice Trends