Posted on 12/22/2009 3:04:23 AM PST by reaganaut1
Doctors were able to surgically remove the so-called Botax from the Senate's health-care overhaul bill and replace it with a 10% tax on tanning services.
"We suggested that the tanning tax would be a better alternative to the cosmetic tax and hopefully will reduce the incidence of skin cancer down the road," said David M. Pariser, president of the American Academy of Dermatology Association, which represents dermatologists.
The American Medical Association had also opposed the proposed 5% tax on cosmetic procedures -- dubbed the Botax after the antiwrinkle product Botox -- which was among the issues it wanted changed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. After that change and others were made over the weekend, the AMA announced its support Monday for the Senate bill.
A spokesman for Mr. Reid said in an email the tanning tax was "on the table for a while" before the Botax was proposed several weeks ago.
An industry spokesman said U.S. tanning businesses were unlikely to earn enough to provide the government with the roughly $2.7 billion over 10 years envisioned by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. The Botax was expected to generate an estimated $5.8 billion.
There are an estimated 20,000 tanning salons in the U.S., mostly stand-alone shops, and it's impossible to know what total revenue figures are for the industry, said Dan Humiston, president of the Indoor Tanning Association. "It's almost laughable" to think the tanning industry's revenue adds up to what Congress is projecting, said Mr. Humiston, who owns a chain of 34 salons in upstate New York.
Mr. Humiston added that salons have been hit hard by the downturn, as middle-class customers cut back on spending. He said he has closed four shops since 2008, and has been discounting heavily to get customers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Raising $2.7 billion over 10 years from 20,000 tanning salons equates to $13,500 per salon per year. That's a big hit, which will probably put many salons out of business. What gives Congress the right? Of course, the actual revenue raised will be much less, because salons will close. Laid off people don't pay income taxes.
It's easy to target "vanity" expenditures like cosmetic surgery or tanning salons, but in a free country people should spend their money as they see fit.
It is called Fascism.
It’s an act of war.
Predictable target from the epitome of pasty-faced, socialist milquetoasts.
I wonder how long it will be before we know about all the backroom deals, payoffs and bribes that went into the final bill.
“It’s easy to target “vanity” expenditures like cosmetic surgery or tanning salons,”
It appears to me that most of those who are interested in a tan are now opting for the spray on type. So, perhaps use of tanning beds may have been in decline anyway?
Figures. These vampires loathe strong light so they decided to tax it.
Say goodbye to tanning salons. If there is no financial incentive to operate them, they will disappear. Simple economics that the US Senate can not grasp.
Here’s what I get out of this: there are probably thousands and thousands of details, worked out by quote somebody” (read: staffers) that adds up to this program. This silly issue with taxing on tanning is just one, miniscule detail.
The basic difference being capitalism and socialism is the fact that in capitalism through the use of prices, millions of pieces of information are plugged into a system, collated, analyzed and churned to give a democratic result that will please and benefit the majority of people, and make the best use of limited resources. It does all of this with almost no human intervention. They call this “The Invisible Hand”. It is an amazing mechanism, but it has been vilified by liberals.
One has to wonder what liberals have against “The Invisible Hand”, but one doesn’t have to wonder too long. There is three very important and basic components of liberalism: arrogance, conceit and ignorance. Is this trifecta of characteristics that when taken into account help explain why liberals are enamored of socialism.
They have the arrogance of the officeholder who feels that they have a right to dictate to others how they should live their lives.
They have the conceit that no matter how complicated the issue, they can place their hands on the levers and controls of a machine and manipulate it (almost always with no training, understanding or testing) to produce a result that they view as beneficial, even when they have neither consulted with others nor analyzed the problem to determine that their solution that will provide is the one that is needed.
But most of all, they have ignorance. And they have the type of ignorance which is often the most dangerous, most wasteful and almost always most dramatic and destructive: they have the ignorance of not knowing the limits of their ignorance. Put another way, they never take into account that they might not know everything.
It is all three of these characteristics that define liberalism and the “solutions” that liberalism produces. Solutions that are massively expensive, based on dogma rather than scientific trial or analysis, poorly thought out and poorly implemented. But worst of all, these are solutions for nonexistent problems. By that I mean that because liberals almost always fail to properly analyze cause-and-effect, their efforts are usually concentrated on the aspect of a problem where there will be the least benefit and the most waste.
If this sounds like liberal solutions to healthcare, global warming, poverty and nearly any other issue, that would be correct.
Liberals often feel (and “feeling” is very, very important to the core of liberalism) that doing something, ANYTHING, is far superior to doing nothing. This is a key difference with conservatism, because conservatives often understand the limits of knowledge, and recognize that there are cases where doing something for the sake of just “doing something” is far more damaging and expensive than doing nothing.
And that is precisely where we are with healthcare.
They are going to collect this from the sun? How?
Oh, that's right, they will just change the laws of physics.
Well put.
More lost jobs.
Clearly this is an act of racism targeted directly at “whitey”.
I might be missing something, but why are these being targeted? What happens when they destroy these businesses? Which one will they single out and unfairly tax?
They are paving that road to hell with all their empty good intentions.
And we're supposed to cheer?
Un_freakin_believable
Taxing tanning salons is so far from what the Federal government should be doing
Why doesn’t Obama tax all those Vietnamese nail salons while he is at it?
Exactly. That is a luxury people can do without so Harry can kiss that revenue good bye. Such conniving idiots they are.
In our salon we provide tanning services. I just spoke with my boss about this yesterday. Tanning is a big part of our Day Spa.
I tan quite often. Very relaxing. Anyhow, she is so pissed!! Being a small business owner, she may have to shut down the tanning part of the salon. She cannot afford to pay that tax. she already pays for our health care insurance. She can’t do both. She warned us that she may have to drop our insurance as well.
I don’t blame her either.
“Why doesn’t Obama tax all those Vietnamese nail salons while he is at it?”
Speaking of Vietnamese, I have a friend who is a Vietnam vet and owns 4 of these tanning salons. He is just treading water, with revenues down 20% in the past year. $13,500 times 4 is $54,000. He’s done.
I hope he pulls through but I guess doing nails is a luxury when money is tight
We all know why botox was dropped from the bill - pelosi....
He would survive with his tanning salons if fed-gov kept their fingers out of his cash register.
They should tax abortion procedures.
This tax is targeted at race, in that most people who use tanning salons are Americans of European ancestry. How about also taxing hair straightening and braiding.
Tax teleprompters by elected officials, per-use, prohibitively.
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