Additional 15% Tax Introduced On Women’s Sanitary Napkins?
After the UK joined the Common Market in 1973, a 17.5% Value Added Tax (VAT) was introduced on sanitary products. In 2000, after lobbying by Labour MP Dawn Primarolo the tax was reduced to 5%. She explained the reduction was "about fairness, and doing what we can to lower the cost of a necessity". [...] David Cameron was asked about sanitary taxation by a student at the University of East Anglia. He answered: "This is a long-standing campaign. I have had a look at it in the past. It's quite difficult." [...] Elsewhere in the EU, Slovakia is an example of where tax is paid on sanitary products at the basic goods rate of 20%. Slovakian director Diana Fabianova who made the film The Moon Inside You, external, said: "There are no plans to change the law. When the sexual revolution and feminism was happening in the West, we had a communist regime. And you can still feel that we skipped these important changes. There is no interest from political sides to stand up for these issues."