Small Business Owners Furious as ‘Tan Tax’ Begins
President Obama saw fit to crack wise about the tanning tax during his remarks to the White House Correspondents Association annual dinner. Meanwhile, out in the real world, small business owners were trying to figure out how they were going to be able to comply with the paperwork and cost burden the new tax would impose. This was a tax that came out of nowhere and came with little helpful guidance from the IRS. Dave Morris, owner of Sunrise Tanning in Mishawaka, Indiana, summed it up this way:
I work 65 hours here just to make ends meet. They take 10 percent off of that. It’s going to be really hard.
In the same city, Jillian Frank, one of the 40 employees at Fun Tan, said:
If business really starts to slow down, I could lose my job.
The owner of two tanning salons in Virginia had this to say:
It is very emotional to see your dream being literally shattered by someone in Washington.
According to industry estimates from the Indoor Tanning Association, over half of tanning salon owners are women. Just like barber shops, tanning salons are places where people gather and talk and share news of the day. For the next several months they’ll be talking about how Obama raised their taxes and broke his promise.
Taxpayer advocacy group Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) has just released an “Obama Tax Hike Exemption Card,” a wallet-sized parody card which “exempts” any American making less than $250,000 from all taxes signed into law or threatened by President Obama. Cardholders are asked to present the card to merchants and if challenged, ask politely, “Are you calling President Obama a liar?” Users of the card are encouraged to film this scenario as it unfolds and submit it to the ATR website.
Some Americans may be thinking that because they do not visit tanning salons, they have nothing to worry about when it comes to getting whacked with higher taxes. But the White House has further designs on our lives: President Obama himself has floated the idea of a national sales tax on soda and sugary drinks. In an interview with Men’s Health, Obama said the tax was “an idea we should be exploring.”
Rest assured that soon one of your own habits will be ripe for a little “guidance” from the federal government.
The unconstitutional Wealthscare Bill (because it was always about stealing more of your money) is leading to unconstitutional taxes through unconstitutional behavior controls levied by an unconstitutional president and his unconstitutional czar presidency. Now the next step is to stack the courts with constitution haters to try and prevent the rollback that is surely going to come.
The most hated words in the near future will be liberal, progressive, socialist, social reform, redistibutive anything, level the playing field, equal results, politian, deomocrat, welfare, government worker, government pension, bailout, The Fed, taxes, RINO and illegal alien. Wow this is endless.
The rules of this adminstration: If it’s perceived as good, kill it, lie about it. Cheat on your own taxes and finances, lie about it. If it’s evil, promote it. If it is Christian or Jewish, tax it, lie about it, kill it. If there is a pot of money somewhere, steal it, lie about it.
Had enough yet?
Jeffrey, you’re exactly right! If you are a productive, job-producing businessman or privately-employed wage-earning citizen…TAX YOUR A** and make it HARD to stay in business or keep your job!
If you are a government-worker, illegal alien, or just lazy as hell, take drugs, and don’t want to provide for yourself…KEEP YOUR CUSHY, WELL-PAID government salary no matter what happens in the real world, have the feds FIGHT for your right to work here no matter how many laws you broke to get here, or get the government to pay for your parisitical existence by providing FREE food and housing (at least for now…though many broke state governments have reached the end here).
Yesiree…something is strangely WRONG in Obama’s socialist-paradise vision of America!
You know something-maybe its about time to practice some outright defiance and NOT PAY THE TAX. After all, isnt that how the American revolution started, with acts such as the Boston Tea Party and refusal to pay the Stamp Tax? What are they going to do, put all of us in jail?
This is exactly right. We need to find a way to do this systematically and with great impact. Maybe we ought to arrange days where we purchase nothing all day? I’m shooting in the dark, but there are people out there who can come up with an idea that would work.
Sure to send the Oompa-Loompa vote into a tizzy. On a more serious note, I do visit tanning salons on occasion and could really care less if I pay a bit more. The key word here is “on occasion.” Those tanorexic types need a bit of motivation to slow down. What happens is they end up getting skin cancer and end up on the public dole for treatment. If implementing a small tax prevents this unnecessary use of my tax dollars then I have no problem with it. The preamble to the U.S. Constitution states that, “We the People” established the Constitution to, “Promote the General Welfare.” This action would seem to promote that noble goal.
However, I understand that some conservatives may disagree with my interpretation of “Promoting the General Welfare,” means. That’s where elections and the SCOTUS comes in. Elections have consequences guys.
On a separate note, this is bound to be very upsetting to out favorite Oompa-Loompa, John Boehner.
Since I thought this through, my take would be that people using tanning salons are not typically on the dole. Rather they are working sorts who tend to have insurance. In which case, your tax dollar never went to their treatment if they developed skin cancer.
Since you’ve seemed incapable of thinking anything through given the history of your posts on PJM, it does not surprise me what position you would take here. Since you see no problem with the redistribution of wealth, why then, the direct victims of this particular theft must be taxed higher. Because the consequences of not redistributing wealth by taxing them means they stay or end up on the dole. Therefore, if we don’t redistribute wealth up front by taxing them when they are insured and responsible for their own health care, we will be worse off because we would have to redistribute wealth when they get cancer because if they get cancer, they must not have had insurance and were rather on the dole and they wouldn’t have been visiting tanning parlors in the first place.
Do I have your logic pinned down? If this sounds like insane logic, it’s because it is. Obamacare has been using illogical arguments to hard sell to people they safely assumed were incapable of thinking anything through – jack@$$e$ like yourself – from the very start.
The tanning tax is not being taken from people on or expected to be on the dole. It won’t benefit them in any way. It’s going imnto other peoples pockets. It’s wealth distribution by government fiat, jack@$$. And no matter what you claim or how you spin it, this is a free country and you have no right to my wallet.
Sorry, justpassingthrough, but you don’t really understand the demographic that visits tanning salons. The one I visit on occasion is frequented by a fairly young crowd. Most young people, if you were to poll them, have no health insurance! This is why HCR is so appealing to them. They can get on (or back on) their parents policy (till they are 26), which would indeed make my above argument null and void. However, that is not the case now. If someone with no insurance develops melanoma from excessive tanning they end up on medicaid. Medicaid is paid for with my (our) tax dollars. So behavior modification is appropriate in order to reduce the incidence of skin cancer (and the costs to the public that it incurs). Most young people think they are invincible and never listen to old folk anyway. However, I don’t think they deserve to die for it. That’s how Republicans think.
All your clap-trap about wealth redistribution and freedom is just delirium from too much of that nasty tea. I understand you are really, really mad you lost the last election by about 10 million votes. A lot of those votes were from young people (who visit tanning salons). To them voting Republican is like admitting they have an STD. But, by all means, campaign on the tanning salon tax, etc. That ought to be interesting. Maybe, John Boehner can be your point man on the issue.
People on the ‘dole’ do not use Tanning Salons. Young people having no health insurance are not visiting tanning salons except as occasional users. The ones in jobs without health benefits are not the ones you called ‘tanorexic types’.
Nice try though.
And my opinion of you as a liberal dullard who can neither think for himself, nor handle the truth if he could, has nothing to do with any angst about losing an election. I did not lose any election. I did not run in one. It matters not at all to me whether the vote I cast went to the winning or losing side side. That is past.
It’s the immature propagandized occupants of the liberal clown car like yourself who see winning or losing an election as personally defining, just as they did in 2000, 2004, and 2006. What matters to me, what is defining, is the policies of the administration and legislature after the election, nothing so simplistic as ‘We’re Number 1′. You’re a fanboy no different from someone hanging out in a sports bar every night crowing that after the last game of the season or drowning his sorrows in beer when his team loses.
I’m not like you. You’re a specious jack@$$ too full of a uselessly distorted liberal arts education to realize how ill equiped you are to opine on the real world and how it works. If you did you would at least understand if not care that even something as simple as an increased tax on tanning parlors is wealth redistribution by government fiat from those who produce to those who don’t. From the ant to the grasshopper.
You probably think that parroting the asinine logic you get from wherever makes you seem smart here amongst people who DO know how the real world works. It doesn’t, fanboy. You probably also think that buying into that tripe wholeheartedly ensures you a comfortable perch in the new order you’re buying into – pay your tax increases each year and ther government will see to it your warm, safe, and sexually satisfied. Big surprise coming your way. It won’t fanboy. If you had any capability of thinking things through and taking the long view – again, how the world works – you would realize that it is YOU, and your generation who are going to be the biggest losers.
Not because following generations won’t pay the same price for your ignorance, but because you and the other clown car occupants will have first hand experience in what you had and why you lost it. Then again, maybe not. The clown car occupants seem to own an endless ability to deceive themselves with just a little nudge from the ringmaster.
Ummmm…”If implementing a small tax prevents this unnecessary use of my tax dollars then I have no problem with it.”…if implementing this tax leads to less customers, therefore less spending in those shops, thereby driving these small business owners out of business, wouldn’t this decrease tax revenue to the government and make your SHARE of taxation go proportionally higher to make up the difference in order to keep the same governmental spending levels intact that you are so enamored with?
There is an easier way to achieve all this than bankrupting small business owners and meddling in the discretionary spending habits of your fellow citizens…because eventually, they will get around to YOUR discretionary spending habits also.
Just take it upon yourself to refuse your next income tax/welfare check. You’ll be helping statists such as yourself countrywide anonymously. It’s patriotic
“if implementing this tax leads to less customers, therefore less spending in those shops, thereby driving these small business owners out of business, wouldn’t this decrease tax revenue…?”
Only if you assume that the money not spent on tanning is flushed down the toilet. In reality, it will just be spent at another business, increasing their revenue and their taxes.
Is it the job of govt to determine which businesses thrive, and which get flushed?
That revenue might not be spent elsewhere in a way that recreates the jobs lost or the businesses shut though, which could lead to an diminishment of taxable income. Maybe they save the money, maybe they go out to eat a little more (until we get an excise tax on that too), etc. That would probably shift a little more money to current businesses, but again, probably not enough to create the new jobs to offset the ones lost.
Also, if they are no longer spending in the tanning salons, but in other places that don’t have the fed. excise tax, then yes, there is directly a loss of federal tax revenue from that tax, in addition to the added burdens placed on the unemployment offices, etc., which also adversley affects the federal (and local) budgets.
It’s not the worst excise tax going, but it is a good example of how it’s possible to kill small businesses on a whim while justifying it with a flimsy excuse of ‘looking out for the greater good’. I’d really have liked to have seen some real work on the budget and the programs that are in existence already before they started looking for ways to nickle and dime their way out of an awful deficit. Where was the line-by-line examination of the budget? The commitees on waste and fraud for medicare? The review of Social Security? The refunding of both by stopping Congress from raiding their funds to push other programs? Both parties are guilty of not doing this, but President Obama campaigned, and continues to speak, as if he is different and made of sterner, smarter material and able to be the leader to get the Congress to tackle the big problems and budget issues and come up with solutions. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t see it happening now, or ever with this adminstration and congressional leadership.
Why am I not surprised to find that our favorite left liberal thinks that it is the job of govt to protect people form themselves.
What’s next, banning fast food?
Yes.
BS- no proven stats show what you allege
you can get skin cancer from the SUN too- are they gonna tax people who go in it? truckers whose arms stick out the window, people who work outdoors like lifeguards?? that’s who gets skin cancer
most skin cancer is genetic – gonna tax people with bad DNA too?
and Vitamin D from sunshine is actually GOOD for most people, it prevents cancer
so you have bad science(gee I remember the same swine who passed this tax bashing Bush for similar)
as well as prejudice driving this decision
anyway you look at this it’s RACIST RACIST RACIST
b/c dark skinned people do not use tanning salons-
I think we should tax black hair straightening products- the chemicals are poisonous – the salon operators get cancer at higher rates, and many of those people don’t have insurance and will cost traxpayer money to treat
PFFFFT
Nothing will change too many people will just gripe but don’t ‘wannah git involved’ I hear here at work all day long….
To avoid the discriminatory tax, just go old school: solar. Manbearpig approved.
I hope the tanning salons put a sign up telling customers that they are being charged an extra 10% because of Obama. Most of the local tanning salon customers voted for Obama.
Where were all of these owners? It was all on C-Span!!! Hope and Change!! The most transparent administration ever!! Obama/Biden 08
It’s not the money they did it for, it’s the symbolism. It’s a tax on white people. What would the MSM do if Bush put a special tax on malt liquor?
Or, if Dub(ya) had put an excise tax on Chrysler 300s, Cadillac Escalades or, well, dubs (20 inch wheels, used on those 300s and Escalades)?
Or Afrosheen ?
This is a tax on white people.
Ding, ding, ding.
“Tanning salons brace for the hit ObamaCare is about to put on their bottom lines.”
Tanning…”bottom lines”…yes I got it.
Don’t know whether to laugh or cry though
Here’s my solution, refuse to pay it. Here’s the letter I sent ot my congress critters announcing my refusal to be a slave any more.
Ken
Ok, the federal government is going to sue Arizona.
So the feds and obuma are going to sue the state of Arizona for enforcing federal law on a state level. Maybe it’s because Arizona also added more and better civil right protections than federal law? We all know how the federal government hates competition.
How much more plain can this administration make it that they will not enforce federal immigration laws? If they will not enforce our laws that they create, why should we obey any laws that they write? This is a line that they have crossed in their corruption and it’s time to tell them to buzz off. I’ll say it here and now, you no longer have any force of law that you can use against me. No federal law has any authority over me or the free people of the United States. Your willful failure to treat us all as equal under the law overturns the laws and your authority.
You, Barrak Obama and you, the Congress of the United States, have failed in your most important duty. It is your foremost job to protect the sovereignty of the United States of American and protect its citizens from harm. By not enforcing our border laws you are willfully permitting the invasion by criminals and terrorist into the US. The lives of our fellow citizens lost and their blood spilled is on your hands. The property stolen and the treasury robbed is your fault. You are all not part of the solution, but your corrupt criminal supporting acts are the problem.
Your refusal to enforce the immigration laws until immigration reform passes only shows that you are doing this as a political football. You are holding our lives and property as hostage to your political agenda. This is just plain evil, repulsive, and un-american.
There are now reports that obuma intends to solve this problem by use of a presidential pardon or executive order. Since congress is balking at passing his version of immigration reform he will just make them totally irrelevant. Who needs lawmakers as a rubber stamp when the king obuma can just make a decree?
You, Barrak Obama, your bureaucrats, and the liberal democrats, indeed the whole of congress are ordered to vacate your offices. Your willful acts against the laws of this nation, your oaths of office, and it’s citizens make you all unfit to serve. If you are campaigning for office in 2010 you should save your money for your immediate retirement.
This free American taxpayer will no longer obey you and your evil kind. I call on all Free Americans to do the same.
Ken Lowder
oneangrytaxpayer.org
Feel free to copy and paste this and send it to your congressional critters in your own name. I already have. KL
first of a multitude of taxes for “whites only”
Just a word to Praetorian, funny, the Praetorian Guard originally was formed to guard the EMPEROR and later turned on the PEOPLE of Rome,but, I digress, what this person misses is the steady drip of nanny state progressivism. Sure, we can say it’s really nothing, a 10% tax on THOSE people who can probably afford it and should be paying anyway ’cause they might be a burden on society later due to their bad habits. Praetorian can’t see this same thing happening in the not too distant past. On a much bigger scale then, of course. It was easy to go along when THOSE people were attacked ’cause you didn’t want to speak out and become one of them and, like, you kinda’ agreed, for whatever reasons. Obviously, I’m speaking of every socialist, including Nazi, government ever. Now, hold on, I’m not saying this extreme is happening at this moment. The progressives have smartened up. They have realized that baby steps are the way to go. Use taxes on particular groups, small groups at that, to “nudge” them into conforming with the views of the government and the public good. Problem is, today’s progressives are children of the “I want it and I want it now!” age and they have shown their hand much too early. That hand is about to be bitten, God willing! As a further note to Praetorian’s idiotic logic, perhaps one should not be allowed to drive a car unless they have the economic means to take care of themselves in a vegetative state for the rest of their lives or garanteed insurance to do so. Of course, this is the extreme of what could happen in a crash but, best to be on the safe side, eh? How about pedestrians? Should they have insurance against being hit before they walk the streets? I know this sounds so illogical right now but, imagine how many people that would take off the “public dole”. I would hazard to guess a lot more than those who contract skin cancer in a tanning booth. How long do you think it would take for this to become law? For now, let’s just go with a tax on soda pop, you know, for the public good.
mmm mmm mmm Hope and Change mmm mmm mmm It’s Bush’s fault mmm mmm mmm Your taxes won’t go up a single dime mmm mmm mmm Are you still glad that you voted for Obama? ROFLMAO
Most importantly this tax is RACIST and DISCRIMINATORY! I’m being denied the fair and equal opportunity as mandated in the Constitution to be more like my brown skinned fellow citizens.
I am a small business owner myself and don’t want to see another small business go under, yet more and more people will find that they can get a tan out of a can and probably will head in that direction. Until…Uncle Sam puts a tax on “bottled tans!”. We are headed in that direction unfortunately.
Do we know if this tax applies exclusively to tanning bed usage, or simply to anyone with a business liscence that lists them as a tanning salon? A lot of salons do both now, since a lot of women like the tan, but don’t want to risk the skin damage of excessive time in the uv-bed. If you get rid of your beds and go to spray only, does it remove the tax? Or do they consider spraying chemicals on your skin to be bad for you to (maybe a future excise tax)? That distinction was something I didn’t catch in the article.
well I knew the tanning tax was RACIST RACIST RACIST RACIST
and now the article tells me it is also SEXIST!
and will put people OUT of work
3 strikes I wish you were out
way to go O’Bumbler
This is a tax on light-skinned people. How about a tax on kinky hair? Would that seem fair? Didn’t think so.
Clearly our president is a racist, targeting pale pasty white people with his tan tax
SHAME
Gotta love a racist tax!
This tax doesn’t just effect the businesses that offer tanning but the companies that make tanning beds, the companies that process the payments, the companies that build the strip malls that would have housed future tanning salons, the sign shops that make the channel letters out side and a multitude of other intertwined businesses.
The commerce clause was used for purposes for which it was never intended, so we have precedent. Imagine how much easier the healthcare laws can be used…..tanning parlors now but fast foods, sweets of any type, guns, sports like climbing, skiing, organized sports activities for kids, red meat, alcohol, motorcycles, sports cars, ultralights, all gas-powered engines – where do you think it will end if the argument is built around better health and lower cost? There’s no logical end point as long as these busybodies have any authority at all and they have NO business limiting our choices cause they just ain’t that damned smart.
Boo hoo. So tanning salons have to pay an extra tax. That’s because tanning is known to cause skin cancer, so an extra tax makes sense.
You just don’t get it, sharonsj. A lot more people get hurt or die driving cars. Do you suggest an extra tax on those getting a driver’s license? How about a question on your tax form, “are you ever a passenger in a car?” that will trigger an extra tax? “Are you a police officer or fireman?” that should be good for an extra tax. “Are you involved in the mining industry?” Whoa, that should surely be taxable, don’t you think? Again, it’s that steady drip, drip of progressivism that says “we’re just looking out for you ’cause you’re too stupid to know better”. Eventually, they will find a way to tax or prohibit something you do sharon. Then what will be your excuse?
How many people of color tan? Looks like this is a white people tax. If I had a tanning salon I’d reduce the retail price of the tan to 0 and charge admission to get in the door.
This is a racist TAX from the Obama administration and is a violation of civil rights. This tax targets white people and taxes them. Black and other dark skinned nationalities do not tan only white and fair skinned people do. So to target a certain proportion of the population for tax is unconstitutional. Now what do you think would happen if they taxed chitterlings that black people enjoy eating fried and could say it is unhealthy. What do you think would happen. So this tax needs to be repealed as it violates civil rights.
How would one go about imposing an ignorance tax on elected officials? Far too many regulations, pork barrel insertions and regulations are passed without regard to consequence. I had a 10 year business expansion plan that included adding 45,000 plus jobs. In the stroke of a pen, these imbeciles put a nix on this. Three years planning and 45,000 jobs down the drain because they felt the IRS wasn’t getting enough taxes out of the populous. INSANE. I am yet to meet someone who says, “Gosh, I feel bad. I wish I could give more to the government. They do so much for me and ask so little.”
Yesterday I saw Nancy Pelosi give a speech regarding unemployment benefits. She actually said, “Unemployment benefit was the single best job creation program our government has ever created.” When given an “out” and pushed for an explanation, she said that we needed to keep people unemployed so we could hire more people to process unemployment checks. I asked, “If one person can process 10,000 checks per week, wouldn’t it be better to lose that one processor job because those 10,000 people found jobs?” She thinks that would be counterproductive. To what agenda, we are yet to find out.
Why in God’s name do we let people this ignorant speak, let alone speak publicly? I am soooo frustrated.
I for one am boycotting getting a tan! This tax is outrageous and I am going to speak with all my friends who tan and get them to stop tanning too! By God this is un-American! First Obama gets us in 2 wars then he destroys our economy and tries to cover it all up by bailing out the very banks he conspired with to do this to us! Now he targets ALL white people by taxing our God given rights for personal expression. This has gone too far! His racial bias of giving our hard earned money to neer-do-well lazy races and illegal immigrants. The next thing you know he will bring back the pre-Reagan welfare programs and pay black women to pop out babies like popcorn all over again! Think about it, at $60/mo * 10% tax= $72 more a year, THAT’S OUTRAGEOUS!!!