For a while now (since 1973 if were being specific) the UK government has enforced a Value Added Tax on the price we pay for certain goods and services, also known most commonly as VAT. It is a standard 20% on most goods and services, there is a 5% VAT on items seen as non-essential ‘luxury’ items and zero percent VAT on essential luxury items.
Bizarrely sanitary protection products like tampons and maternity pads are classed as non-essential ‘luxury’ items in the UK, meaning there is still a 5% tax on all sanitary products.
A cake is classed as a luxury item and therefore has zero VAT. Where as clearly every women who menstruates monthly for constant years of there life, really want to bleed every month and clearly should be paying for those "luxury" items they need to be able to cope with there everyday lives.
In my opinion it is very clearly just purely a tax on women. The effect this has in the more poverty stricken areas in the UK is barbaric. Not only do I think pads and tampons should be provided free for any women living on and below the poverty line but that there should be zero tax on these NON luxury products. I have never come across a women who thinks that a period is a luxury.
I think the illustrator Alice Skinner has perfectly captured within her art the issues within society and particularly for young people the problems that face them just because they can't afford menstrual products within her £10 pound note tampon drawing.
BBC have a really interesting and useful calculator which you can work out how much money you personally have spent on sanitary products and the VAT you have paid, and therefore how much you are lighly to spend in your lifetime. Below I have worked out my predicted spendings , click the image below to go and find out how much you have spent too.
In my lifetime I am predicted to spend £1,472.07 just for being a women, this is a cost that no man will ever have to endure.The fact that in such a so-called "equal" time for gender within society that women are still having to suffer and undergo these extra costs for just simply being born with a vagina is ludicrous.
In 2015, activist Laura Coryton created a petiton calling for the UK government to introduce a zero-rate for the products, which gained more than 320,000 signatures.
In July this year, supermarket Tesco cut prices on nearly 100 menstrual protection products in order to shoulder the 5% VAT cost.
The European Commission says it is aiming to bring in a zero rate for sanitary products in 2018 and the UK government has already legislated to allow this to happen as soon as rules change. We have just over two months left of 2018 and I have seen no change in the VAT rate for sanitary products currently, nor do I think we will for the next couple of years.
Once the UK has finally left the EU there will be no excuse for this inequitable tax on women.
Comments