Twitter, Facebook, and IG…have all banned the exiting POTUS – Donald Trump. He was sending out tweets backing his supporters who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, 6 January. Videos were removed from Facebook and Youtube where he was lauding his supporters and encouraging them to inflict violence.
A day of reckoning for what they call….Trumpism? 🙅
🩸 Tampon Tax Terminated
“This commitment takes us another step closer to making [sanitary products] available and affordable for all women.” – Chancellor Rishi Sunak
🛣️ A long road. The tax on period products has been in place since 1973! The United Kingdom was bound and helpless by the European Union VAT directive. 20 years ago, Labour MP Dawn Primarolo fought for the VAT on tampons to be reduced from 17.5% to 5% – and won. In 2014, Laura Coryton started the campaign Stop Taxing Periods where 320,000 people signed her petition. Finally, in March 2020, Rishi Sunak announced that “Tampon Tax is set to be abolished.” A true moment to rejoice.
📍 A landmark moment. Just one item on a long list of policies that should have been left behind in the Stone Ages – has finally been abolished. Starting January 1, 2020, the UK won’t have a 5% VAT aka sales tax on women’s sanitary products. It is estimated that the tax cut will be worth 7p off a pack of 20 tampons and 5p off a pack of 12 sanitary pads. That equates to a saving of £40 over a lifetime.
💰 The Tampon Tax Fund. This fund was established by the UK in 2015 to donate money to charity equivalent to the amount of VAT revenue collected. Since then, £47M has been donated to charities working with vulnerable women and girls. The Tax also became an unlikely pawn in the loaded debate over whether the UK should remain in the European Union.
👨⚖️ The Zero Rate Move. In 2016, the Parliament had approved to shift to a ‘zero rate’ as soon as the UK had the discretion to do so under its legal obligations.
⚡ finally. FINALLY. With the exit from Brexit on 31st December 2020 (which withdrew the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland from the European Union), the UK was no longer bound by this taxation system and was free to take its own decisions. It joined the wagon with Canada, India, Australia, and Kenya who currently have zero tax on menstrual products.
It only took 48 years of paying it, and two decades of campaigning to get there.
👇Ah, and also this
🤑 A fortune, an arm, and a leg? BCCI (India’s apex cricket board) is all set to stage the ICC t20 World Cup in India. But here’s the click – the government might decline to grant ‘full exemption’ and BCCI might end up paying INR 906 cr. Even if the government grants a partial exemption, the board might have to pay somewhere around INR 225 cr., if it wants to host the tournament.
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🧹 Curses! Tax on Witches- Crazy Tax Story
History is so full of stories of Governments and lawmakers trying to make a buck by Taxing Odd Things. And here is one of them – in 2010 a bill was introduced by the Romanian Senate – which would tax witches and fortune-tellers 🧙♀️ and hold them liable for false predictions. An Income tax of 16% and health and pension payments were also imposed.
To start. How did witchcraft – subject throughout continental Europe to persecution and prosecution from roughly 1400 to 1800 – become business as (not-so) usual in Romania in the first place? 😱 The exact scale of the witchcraft economy in Romania is difficult to gauge, but, ten years ago, the BBC reported on “Romanian witches’ roaring trade,” and business seems to have boomed in the meantime. Flyers with lists of available services are stapled to telephone poles, and ads for witches run in mainstream newspapers. 📰 Several witches have marketed themselves into household names.
Two Sides. Same Coin. 🏅 The Romanian government wanted to tap into this sometimes ostentatious stream of wealth for years. Could its new tax on witchcraft be motivated by more than money? On the flip side, the tax represents a certain degree of legitimization by formally making witchcraft part of the mainstream economy.
Making a tax is recognizing that it’s real? What other fragments of superstitious tradition might gain its sanction? 🧛 Vampire hunters in Transylvania, perhaps?
💭 Byte of The Day
