How luxury items and essential items sometimes get confused.
Luxury is a funny word isn’t it? It can drum up such a wide range of thoughts for many people. For me when I think of luxury, I think of huge cruise liners on round the world voyages, I think of decadent dinners at black tie events, I think of sitting in the bath for 2 hours with all the soaps, bath bombs and candles I can get my hands on. Basically my mind goes to all the things that are lovely once in a blue moon, but aren’t particularly necessary or even sometimes affordable. The funny thing though, is that some words mean different things to different people.
One such group that seems to have a different understanding of the word luxury are MPs. When I say “”luxury” to an MP (or at least to 305 of them), they tend to think of tampons. That’s right tampons.
For those of you that may have been unaware, tampons and other sanitary products were voted on in parliament recently and the majority of MPs did not see these as “essential” items. Being the luxury items that they are, this means that women up and down the country will continue to pay tax on them.
Now in the interest of fairness, it is a reduced rate of tax, 5% VAT instead of the standard 20%, but why don’t we compare these luxuries to some of the items that are currently zero tax “necessities”:
Baby clothes and shoes - Seems fair enough. Taxing on a new born child’s clothing seems a little unfair. These are things a baby will certainly need and at the rate they grow you’ll be going through them very quickly! You get a pass.
Motorcycle helmets – again, a real essential item. If you’re going to ride around on a motorcycle, taxing something that may well save your life seems more than a tad unethical. Sure, you can have the zero tax pass too.
Jaffa Cakes – ermmm...
There’s clearly a few holes in a what constitutes an essential item. It hardly seems fair that in a world where your end of the night kebab comes with a tax-free pita, women are being taxed for their natural bodily functions.
While things like this go to show we’re still a little way away from an entirely gender equal society, I think there’s a silver lining. The fact that issues like this are being raised shows we’re heading in the right direction and on top of that, it was only a difference of 18 votes that stopped this change from taking place! Issues for women are being taken more seriously and we are seeing more changes discussed to address the imbalance.
Ladies, the tampon might still be taxed for now and that’s something that we’re just going to have to deal with. However, attitudes are changing and that can be seen though something as simple as the job sharing that we encourage. More businesses are seeing the benefit of having more women employed and are even encouraging job sharing themselves to make it happen. It’s one step at a time, but we’re getting there! Even if, for now, Jaffa Cakes are still seen as more essential than tampons...