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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

What am I missing with the tampon tax

39 replies

AngelicInnocent · 05/01/2021 20:23

In my shopping on 28th December, I bought tampons and they were £1.87. Just going through my shopping tonight and the price remains unchanged.

I was under the impression that they were VAT free as of 1st January which should have reduced the price.

Out of curiosity, I have checked the major supermarkets online and they are all the same price.

So what am I missing or have the supermarkets just left the price unchanged to make extra profits.

OP posts:
Original poster
AngelicInnocent · 05/01/2021 20:25

Didn't mean to enable voting.

Let's say YABU - you have got it wrong.
YANBU - the supermarkets are behaving badly

OP posts:
Minky37 · 05/01/2021 20:25

Don’t know but maybe you could tweet them to ask?

Aubergina · 05/01/2021 20:27

Maybe we have to wait for the new tax year, rather than the new calendar year

NothingICanDo · 05/01/2021 20:27

They're about 4 euro in Ireland 😫

Jimdandy · 05/01/2021 20:27

I think most of them were paying the VAT themselves.

katmarie · 05/01/2021 20:28

A lot of the supermarkets had already stopped charging it I believe.

Jimdandy · 05/01/2021 20:28

@NothingICanDo I lived in Dublin for 18 months from July 2002 and it was an expensive country then.

QueenOfLabradors · 05/01/2021 20:28

I think some companies may have been selling sanpro at its genuine price and absorbing the VAT themselves... forgive the bad pun!

sunshineandskyscrapers · 05/01/2021 20:30

Supermarkets made a big thing of saying that they would pay the tax. A quick Google search puts this as being in 2017. Maybe they continued to cover the tax until it was removed?

TheHateIsNotGood · 05/01/2021 20:38

No idea but I saw this on Euronews the other day as the UK being one of the first countries to stop charging VAT on femine sanitary products.

I'm sure this new legislation will embed at some point but I imagine that most retailers have some other issues to consider right now - although I'm just wildly guessing about that.

Maybe just save up all your post-legislation sanitary product receipts that show the erroneous vat charges for a later date, possibly after the current CV19 wave I suggest, and I'm sure each retailer will be delighted to re-imburse you.

Hopefully they won't have gone bankrupt and will still be able to open to you and your demands in a few weeks.

Original poster
AngelicInnocent · 05/01/2021 20:38

Ahh, the supermarkets paying it themselves would make sense and does ring a bell.

It would appear that I am, in that case, being unreasonable.

OP posts:
Guineapigbridge · 06/01/2021 00:01

WTF I had no idea tampons were SO CHEAP in England!!!!!

It costs me almost $8.50 to buy a pack of 32 here in NZ. So we pay twice the price here!

Eggcorns · 06/01/2021 00:07

@TheHateIsNotGood

No idea but I saw this on Euronews the other day as the UK being one of the first countries to stop charging VAT on femine sanitary products.

I'm sure this new legislation will embed at some point but I imagine that most retailers have some other issues to consider right now - although I'm just wildly guessing about that.

Maybe just save up all your post-legislation sanitary product receipts that show the erroneous vat charges for a later date, possibly after the current CV19 wave I suggest, and I'm sure each retailer will be delighted to re-imburse you.

Hopefully they won't have gone bankrupt and will still be able to open to you and your demands in a few weeks.

I don’t think that’s true, though Bernard Jenkin was certainly trying to push it as a positive effect of Brexit. Ireland doesn’t tax sanitary products, but lots of other countries stopped doing so far earlier, including Kenya and Rwanda.
OliviaPopeRules · 06/01/2021 00:28

They couldn't remove VAT when in the EU, I believe they used to allocate it to women's services.
Ireland never had VAT on sanitary products when it joined the EU and as a result had a grandfathered exemption.
If the Uk were still in the Eu they could not have changes the rate although I believe there are moves to get rid of it in the EU.

HarveySchlumpfenburger · 06/01/2021 00:35

They could remove the VAT while in the EU, they negotiated it years ago. They just couldn’t be bothered to push the legislation through the U.K. parliament until it suited them.

Sinful8 · 06/01/2021 04:21

Stock bought before the tax was removed maybe?

I don't know what the vat laws are about not charging it on products that have already had it charged iyswim

ShetlandWife · 06/01/2021 06:34

@Sinful8 when the product was purchased makes no difference, vat is calculated at the point of sale.

Any tax paid by the supermarkets when they bought then will be reclaimed, so isn't relevant.

Its as previous posters have said, they have been absorbing the vat themselves in recent years.

Parkandride · 06/01/2021 07:01

On your receipt dont they show which lines are VATable with asterisks and at the bottom a summary of what was 20%, 5% etc? Does that help identify it?

Cabincrewclare · 06/01/2021 07:13

I use tampons, but the tampon tax campaign was a total waste of time, effort and money.

Yes we paid vat on them, literallly a few pence per packet.

These few pence that made virtually no difference to 99% of women cumulatively was worth millions to the economy.

And now that has gone.

I read somewhere that the average woman would have paid £40 in her lifetime of vat, so less than £1 a year typically, I don’t know what that’s sort to the economy but probably enough to find a fair fee doctored or nurses.

So to save a few pence, millions has been lost, feels very daft to me I’m afraid

Sometimeswinning · 06/01/2021 07:44

@Cabincrewclare but why should sanitary products be taxed? Tax things people have a choice over. Smoking, sugar tax, alcohol. Why should I spend the extra £40 to have a period?

Cabincrewclare · 06/01/2021 07:46

It’s £40 over a lifetime, it’s pence per month, get over it

scaevola · 06/01/2021 07:50

Some supermarkets have been behaving spectacularly well.

The price on the shelves was the price sans VAT and the supermarket was making up the amount to the exchequer behind the scenes.

If you write to enquire, I recommend you do so neutrally

Why should I spend the extra £40 to have a period? - same reason that most of Europe has it on all foodstuffs (we had many additional exemptions) or on all clothes (we had exemption for children's clothes). It's a general consumption tax, and it's payable on all sorts of needs (including the great persistent myth that man's shaving gear is exempt - it isn't and never has been)

ShetlandWife · 06/01/2021 07:56

@Cabincrewclare It’s £40 over a lifetime, it’s pence per month, get over it

Maybe you should take your own advice, you seem more invested in the debate than anyone 😂

scaevola · 06/01/2021 07:58

And now that has gone

It went some time ago. The revenue was donated to charity from 2015 onwards. There is no change at this point to public finance on this point.

alexdgr8 · 06/01/2021 08:03

you should be able to tell from your receipt which items are vatable.