Meet the Texas teens taking on the state’s “tampon tax”

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On a Friday afternoon final March, Sahar Punjwani ran a well-recognized errand — shopping for tampons, pads and panty liners. But this time, she was joined by legal professionals from a prestigious Houston regulation agency.

“It was weird because we were all crowded into the aisle together, and they were just watching me, waiting for me to hand them my receipt,” Punjwani remembers.

That receipt confirmed that Punjwani had spent $21.56 on menstrual merchandise — and $1.78 on gross sales tax.

Texas is one in all 26 states that prices gross sales tax on menstrual merchandise, one thing Punjwani and her group, the Texas Menstrual Equity Coalition, have been preventing for years to alter. That go to to the pharmacy, and the $1.78 in gross sales tax it generated, was the first step in a brand new problem that the group says they’re ready to take all the solution to the state Supreme Court.

Though the entire group is behind this new effort, it was Punjwani’s receipt that needed to be submitted as proof, and her title that needed to lead the authorized filings, as a result of she was the solely member of the group’s management that was legally an grownup at the time.

Punjwani, now 20, mentioned it’s not stunning to her that this effort to repeal the gross sales tax for menstrual merchandise is being led by a gaggle of youngsters. In her expertise, there’s nonetheless loads of stigma round discussing durations amongst older generations.

“I think that’s translated into a lot of frustration with my peers over not being able to talk about something that is so natural,” she mentioned. “We’ve learned, from social media and other things, to translate that frustration into activism and actual results.”

Combating interval poverty

Punjwani grew up in Houston in an immigrant household wherein menstruation and durations had been seen as a taboo topic. When she was a junior in highschool, she noticed an Instagram publish from a nationwide interval fairness advocacy group promoting a coverage boot camp for younger individuals.

During the coaching, she discovered about how gross sales tax contributes to “period poverty,” a scarcity of inexpensive, accessible menstrual merchandise for low-income individuals. Period poverty is widespread in the United States: 1 in 5 teens can not afford menstrual merchandise, in line with a research from the nationwide advocacy group Period, and 84% have both missed class or know somebody who has missed class resulting from inadequate menstrual provides.

People who use various menstrual provides, like rags and paper towels, are at heightened danger for an infection, and there are damaging psychological well being impacts of not with the ability to afford correct sanitary provides.

Several states have repealed their gross sales tax on menstrual merchandise lately, however as Punjwani discovered in the coaching, Texas has not. In this coaching, Punjwani met different Texas teens who had been as outraged by this as she was — like Zoe Kass.

Kass, now 18, first received concerned with this subject whereas volunteering in the obstetrics clinic at Ben Taub Hospital in Houston. Some of the sufferers she interacted with couldn’t afford menstrual merchandise or had been compelled to sacrifice different requirements to pay for pads and tampons.

Kass co-founded The Period Pact Houston, which raises cash to donate menstrual provides to high school nurses in the Houston space. She’s additionally identified for filling the girls’s restroom at her faculty with pads and tampons, incomes her the nickname “the period girl.”

“There was one day that I dropped a box of tampons down the stairs and this boy caught them and his eyes went really wide,” she mentioned. “I was like, well, we’re fighting stigma one scared teenage boy at a time.”

Many of the younger Texans who met throughout the coverage boot camp had been already doing these donation drives and fundraisers in their very own communities. But they needed to suppose larger. They began assembly usually in summer season 2020, finally titling their group the Texas Menstrual Equity Coalition.

And their first goal? The gross sales tax on menstrual merchandise.

“A lot of people go their whole lives buying menstrual products and never realize they’re paying taxes,” mentioned Punjwani. “And then there are people who are very conscious of that, and that’s who is going to benefit the most from this.”

Legislative efforts

The coalition began working with state legislators, together with Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, who has filed a invoice to make menstrual provides tax-exempt each session since 2017.

None of these payments ever made it out of committee. But in early 2021, Kass received the name: Howard’s invoice was going earlier than the state House Ways and Means Committee, and he or she was being requested to testify.

Kass and one other member of the coalition skipped digital faculty for the day, drove to Austin, sat in entrance of a panel of state legislators and talked about their durations. She mentioned it was empowering to get an opportunity to talk to elected officers, “especially because I can’t even vote for them yet.”

But she additionally knew there was little or no likelihood the invoice would cross, a sentiment she mentioned a few of the legislators conveyed very clearly.

“Not all of them, but some of them definitely saw us and treated us as little girls,” she mentioned. “We’re basically their kids’ ages in a lot of cases, and what right do we have to tell them how it is?”

She mentioned she left the listening to “proud but annoyed.”

The Legislative Budget Board estimated the gross sales tax discount would value Texas roughly $42 million over the two-year price range cycle. The invoice didn’t advance to the House ground.

But the coalition was already working on one other angle to repeal the tax, beginning with Punjwani’s receipt for $1.78.

Challenging the comptroller’s workplace

As a part of their legislative advocacy work, the coalition met with the Women’s Health Caucus, the place they first mentioned the concept of bringing a authorized problem to the tax on menstrual provides. Kass requested her dad if he knew any legal professionals who may assist them discover this avenue, and he related them with prestigious Houston regulation agency Baker Botts.

“When we started digging into sales tax … regulations promulgated by the comptroller, we saw that there was really this inequity going on in the tax treatment of menstrual products,” mentioned Baker Botts affiliate Laura Shoemaker McGonagill.

Baker Botts agreed to take the case professional bono, which is how all of them ended up in the tampon aisle at a retailer in Houston, watching Punjwani purchase menstrual merchandise. They then submitted that receipt to the Texas comptroller’s workplace, requesting a refund on the gross sales tax she’d paid — and a willpower that each one menstrual merchandise must be equally tax-exempt.

Their argument is that menstrual merchandise qualify as “wound care dressings,” which the tax exemption regulation defines as a product that “absorbs wound drainage, protects healing tissue, maintains a moist or dry wound environment (as appropriate), or prevents bacterial contamination.”

“We view this inequitable application of wound care dressings as discrimination on the basis of sex,” mentioned Shoemaker McGonagill. “For example, gender-neutral products, like Band-Aids, are tax-exempt and feminine hygiene products are not.”

She additionally identified that over-the-counter male libido enhancers are tax-exempt below a separate regulation.

“Just as a basic layperson looking at this, I think most people would say managing a monthly menstrual flow is much more important and medically necessary to yourself and to others, compared to libido enhancers,” Shoemaker McGonagill mentioned.

In February, the comptroller’s workplace rejected Punjwani’s request for a refund; she filed an attraction and requested a listening to. If that attraction is denied, they plan to take the case to the courts.

Shoemaker McGonagill mentioned working with the younger girls behind this motion has been one in all the extra inspiring experiences of her profession.

“When I think back to what I was doing when I was 17 or 18, I was not advocating for change at a legislative level,” she mentioned. “We’ve just been blown away by them from the very beginning. They’re very thoughtful. They have good insight. And I think they’re working really hard to remedy the situation through every avenue available to them.”

The struggle goes on

While this case wends its method by means of the administrative system, Kass, Punjwani and their friends are nonetheless working to advance understanding about interval inequities of their neighborhood.

Punjwani is now a sophomore at the University of Chicago, the place she has run menstrual provide donation drives alongside different advocacy work. In her circle of relatives, she has seen firsthand the energy of speaking overtly about these points.

“I have two younger sisters and they know now that this isn’t something you have to be quiet about or use code words for,” she mentioned. Her sister has began operating related donation drives at her highschool, too.

Kass is ending up her senior yr of highschool, nonetheless stocking the bogs and, by means of her AP authorities class, studying much more about the course of she has been collaborating in.

“It’s just been funny, we’ve been talking about lobbyists and Supreme Court cases and the Ways and Means Committee, and it’s like, oh, I testified to them,” she mentioned. “And now working with the lawyers to try to understand the tax code and all that.”

When she joined that coverage coaching a number of years in the past, she mentioned she by no means would have imagined she’d be taking on the state’s tax code on behalf of all menstruating individuals.

“This is the result of a lot of people trusting us and having confidence in us and taking us seriously,” she mentioned. “And if we’re successful, I think it really sets a precedent for other states. Because if Texas can do it, so can everywhere else.”

Disclosure: The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts has been a monetary supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news group that’s funded partially by donations from members, foundations and company sponsors. Financial supporters play no position in the Tribune’s journalism. Find an entire record of them right here.

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