In 2014, I started a petition to end the unfair and sexist “luxury” tax on period products.
Oh, and how did that go?
...in December 2020, Rishi Sunak, then chancellor, announced he was “proud” to finally end the 5% tax rate applied to period products.
Hurrah! Right?
Due to a simple administrative error, period pants (a reusable and environmentally friendly menstrual product) were wrongly categorised by HMRC as clothing rather than menstrual products. As a result, period pants are still being taxed today at 20%.
Ah. The government screwing things up. Gosh. What a shock. Still, everything else is cheaper, right?
It has been two and a half years since Sunak announced the end of the tampon tax (on all products except period pants). You would expect products to be cheaper as a result.
You might. I'm not sure I would...
Yet a report by the not-for-profit advisory firm Tax Policy Associates found they are hardly any cheaper today than they were in 2020, even after adjusting for inflation. This is for a simple and extremely disappointing reason: retailers have kept prices the same and pocketed the reduction in tax as profits, amounting to an estimated £15m every year.
Wow! Who could have forseen that? Except, maybe, everyone..?
It’s time to stop weaponising periods. The point of ending tax on sanitary products is to make them more accessible, not to make retailers richer.
As soon as you figure out how to do that, let us all know, eh?
