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- Better bring your plastic if you want to tan.
Today is a, um, dark day for rabid tanning enthusiasts, like Ohio congressman John Boehner (R-08). Today’s the day a ten percent tax on indoor tanning beds, enacted by Congress as part of the health-care reform bill, went into effect.
“This $2.7 billion tax will hit tens of thousands of small businesses and consumers and is just one of the many of the $569,000,000,000 in new health care taxes that violate the President’s promise not to raise taxes on middle-class families,” according to a post yesterday on the webpage of Ways and Means Committee ranking member Dave Camp, titled “Find Some Shade Because the Tanning Tax Hits Tomorrow.”
He continues, “On June 11, 2010, Ways and Means Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI) wrote to IRS Commissioner Doug Schulman asking whether the IRS would engage in aggressive outreach to notify Americans affected by the health care law’s new tax on tanning services. Camp noted that that the IRS sent over 4 million postcards advertising a small business health care tax credit that many employers are ineligible to receive. The IRS has yet to explain why it has not notified tanning operators about this tax.”
He helpfully includes statistics compiled by the National Federation of Independent Business, Indoor Tanning Association and the International Franchising Association about the onerous cost to America of implementing this new tax.
In case you were wondering, Camp is among the congresspersons worried more about the deficit than whether his unemployed constituents receive extended benefits (current Michigan unemployment rate 13.6, surpassed only by Nevada). But it will surely warm their hearts that he’s aggressively defending their ability to stay tan while sitting around wondering how to pay the mortgage. — Anastasia Pantsios
