State Legislator Wants to Get Rid of State & Local Taxes on Feminine Hygiene Products
Did you know that if you live in New Orleans, Baton Rouge or Shreveport you're exempt from paying local sales taxes on feminine hygiene products?
Well, now there's a push to end those taxes throughout all of Louisiana.
State Representative Aimee Freeman of New Orleans is fighting to get this achieved.
Louisiana already considers water, food, and medicine to be essential, which is why you don't pay taxes on those products. Freeman wants items like tampons and diapers added to that list.
"Well, the women of our state deserve to be treated fairly when it comes to how we pay sales tax and this to me is a fairness issue, it's products that we have to buy," Freeman told WAFB television in Baton Rouge.
This isn't the first time the "pink tax" has been proposed by state lawmakers. According to Freeman, former senator J.P. Morrell filed this same bill back in 2017 and 2019.
In a statement on the capitol floor in 2019, Morrell had this to say:
Don’t sit up here and talk to us about how important babies are to the state, how important it is to protect the rights for people to have babies and then say when it’s our time to make sure they can afford diapers it’s too much... the level of hypocrisy is staggering.
The bill has never made it close the governor's desk because some question if the state can make up for the loss taxes.
Right now, the answer to that question is still up in the air.
The final details of this proposed bill will be discussed once the next session begins on April 12th.