The tan tax: why Congress wants to tax you for trying to look like us

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 Blog / Commentary by IARC

UPS coined the famous phrase “what can Brown do for you?” signifying their leadership in the parcel delivery business.  But according to Senate liberals, what ‘brown’ can actually do for you is get your taxes raised because a 10% tanning tax has been included in the “health care reform” bill to be voted on in the Senate.  What’s the matter, don’t you remember seeing Senators negotiate the tax during live coverage on C-SPAN this past weekend?

The Administration campaigned on a slogan of “change you can believe in,” but seeing how things are going in Washington, we think it really should be changed to “change you can’t believe.”  The President campaigned on the populist rhetoric of “it’s us versus them,” making it sound like he was championing the cause of the little guy against special interests.

But the Left is just as beholden to special interests as ever, voting on card check as payback to labor unions and trying to pass a government-run health care plan to appease government-loving Socialists from San Francisco.  Yet, surgeons and Botox maker Allergan, Inc. successfully lobbied against a proposed 5% tax on Botox applications in the bill, leading to the new tanning tax.  If this isn’t a classic example of a special interest group getting what they want, what is?

The irony is Allergan started a new website and Facebook page in opposition to the “Botax,” stating it was “a tax on self-improvement.”  Isn’t that what the tanning tax is?  And why keep it to just a 10% tax?  If we want to stop all tanning in salons, shouldn’t the tax be 100% to drive them out of business?

Think about other taxes liberals can create to ban tanning: 1) a beach tax, since most people ostensibly visit resorts and beaches to get a tan; and 2) an open-deck apartment complex tax, for people who want to soak up a few rays on beach chairs on top of their building.

At a time when the Left has no idea how to create jobs, and in a country where the rest of us still believe in liberty, do we really want to create more job losses in the 20,000 tanning salons across the country, and even worse, inject more government into our lives?

What Brown should do for you is give you a nice, golden complexion; what it shouldn’t do, is hit your pocketbook.