Issues began to vary in the previous couple of years, as feminine illustration in state legislatures increased and a brand new technology revitalized the difficulty, she mentioned. In 2016, attorneys began submitting lawsuits in opposition to numerous states over the tax, and in 2019 activist youngsters and faculty college students across the nation made a concerted effort to flood state comptroller places of work with functions for tax refunds on menstrual product purchases.
That helped flag the difficulty to state lawmakers and, between 2016 and 2019, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New York, Maryland, Rhode Island and Ohio eradicated the tax (although some states nonetheless enable native taxes).
In 2019, when Ms. Herman was a regulation pupil, she and dozens of different college students equally filed for tax refunds on interval merchandise they bought in Texas, kicking off the trouble there to eradicate the tariff. Earlier this yr, Consultant Donna Howard — who had been pushing Texas to drop the tampon tax since 2017 — launched a invoice within the legislature, a model of which was signed into regulation in June.
Through the pandemic, the federal stimulus invoice categorized menstrual merchandise as essential, permitting customers to purchase them with cash from well being financial savings and versatile financial savings accounts. That additionally led to vary on the state stage, Ms. Strausfeld mentioned. Between 2020 and 2022, 10 extra states eradicated their tampon taxes.
Final yr, the retailer CVS agreed to pay tampon taxes on behalf of the buyer — in shops and on-line — in 10 of the states the place they nonetheless stand: Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and West Virginia. Different states don’t enable distributors to pay gross sales taxes. The corporate additionally dropped the costs of CVS-brand interval merchandise by 25 p.c throughout its shops to assist make them extra accessible.
