Shoppers in Texas now not must pay a sales tax on menstrual products, making the state one of the crucial few within the country to do away with the so-called “tampon tax.”
A new law that went into effect Friday eliminates the sales tax on female hygiene merchandise together with items like tampons, menstrual pads and menstrual cups.
In addition to menstrual merchandise, the legislation, S.B. 379, additionally eliminates the sales tax on circle of relatives care items together with diapers, baby bottles, baby wipes, maternity clothes and breast milk pump merchandise.
The legislation, signed via Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in June, makes Texas certainly one of just about two dozen states that now not rate a sales tax on diapers, in step with the National Diaper Bank Network, a nonprofit group.
Currently, over one dozen states nonetheless rate sales tax on menstrual merchandise, in step with the Alliance for Period Supplies, a nonprofit group that works to finish length poverty.
In the ones states, merchandise like pads, liners and cups are thought to be non-essential items and are matter to sales taxes.
In this Aug. 16, 2019, document photograph, containers of tampons are proven on a grocery store shelf in Los Angeles.
Calimedia by way of Shutterstock, FILE
Advocates for menstrual fairness who oppose a tax on menstrual merchandise say the taboo round menstruation and the loss of get admission to to menstrual merchandise hurts girls economically as it prices them cash for merchandise and would possibly stay them from attending jobs and faculty. Poor menstrual hygiene poses well being dangers for ladies, together with reproductive problems and urinary tract infections.
Period poverty, when other folks can’t manage to pay for even probably the most fundamental of length provides like pads and tampons, is a matter that is affecting girls around the globe, together with the United States.
A 2019 survey of low-income girls in St. Louis, Missouri, discovered just about two-thirds could not manage to pay for menstrual hygiene merchandise previously yr, and greater than 1 in 5 stated they’d the similar downside each month. The girls stated they as an alternative had to make use of material, rags, tissues, bathroom paper and infrequently diapers or paper towels, in step with the file published in the medical journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
In fresh years, the frenzy for menstrual fairness has made growth, with states akin to California requiring free period products in public colleges and schools.
Last yr, the nationwide drugstore store CVS announced it was reducing the cost of CVS Health branded length merchandise via 25% in all CVS Pharmacy places national and would additionally start paying the sales tax on female hygiene merchandise in states the place it nonetheless exists.
Texas Republican state Sen. Joan Huffman, a sponsor of the brand new Texas legislation, described menstrual merchandise as “essential” to girls’s “health and well-being.”
“Every woman knows that these products are not optional,” Huffman said in a statement last year. “They are essential to our health and well-being and should be tax exempt.”
Texas’ legislation getting rid of sales tax on menstrual and baby merchandise comes because the state continues to put into effect a number of strict abortion regulations, together with one prohibiting all abortions after six weeks of being pregnant, with the exception of in clinical emergencies, which the regulations don’t outline.
Under those bans, acting or making an attempt an abortion is a second-degree prison, punishable via as much as existence in jail and a superb of as much as $10,000. The legislation additionally lets in personal electorate to sue any person who “aids or abets” an abortion.
ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab and Mary Kekatos contributed to this file.
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