A recently enacted tanning tax is getting on Gators’ nerves, but the “orange” in Orange and Blue isn’t going anywhere.
As part of the health care reform law signed by President Barack Obama in March, all tanning services that use ultraviolet lamps with wavelengths between 200 and 400 nanometers are taxed an additional 10 percent by the IRS, according to Alligator archives, and the money is used to fund the new health system.
Chris Geisenburg, who owns Tan USA on Northwest 39th Avenue with his wife, said the tax hasn’t turned his customers away, but they do gripe about it.
“No one likes it,” he said, “and they really don’t like it when they find out they’ve got to pay for that health care.”
Geisenburg said he doesn’t believe the new tax is fair to his mostly female customers.
“More women are paying this tan tax than anyone else,” he said. “It’s really a discriminatory tax.”
Gainesville resident Sandy Mihocik, a lab tech for the Florida Department of Transportation said she continues to visit Tan USA at least four times a week. As far as the tax is concerned, she said, she’s pretty much “sucked it up and dealt with it,” although she said it’s “completely unfair.”
“They’re just targeting an industry with no lobbyists,” Mihocik said. “My boyfriend tans also in Orlando … he feels the same way I do. It’s ridiculous.”
Mihocik, who said she prefers tanning beds to lying out in the sun because she can control the amount of light and time it takes to tan, doesn’t agree with the argument that the tax helps deter people from what is considered a more harmful tanning solution.
“If you’re going to get skin cancer, you’re going to get it,” she said. “Why not tax people who sell tan lotion?”
Many students have found a way around the tax because they live in apartment complexes that come with free tanning services.
Carly Myers, a 19-year-old political science major at Santa Fe College, said she uses her free tanning at Campus Lodge about once a week — but only because it’s free.
“It’s more of a convenient thing,” she said. “But it’s not really worth the money to me.”
