Tampon tax is real. Women everywhere pay their governments extra to have periods

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. And sometimes, by which we mean every month for roughly 30 years, it’s downright expensive.

If periods are the price women pay for the ability to make new humans, the “tampon tax” — sales tax applied to sanitary products — is the price they pay, er, because the government can make them. Just think of the taxman as a particularly audacious low-cost airline charging you to use the bathroom on a plane.

You can understand why it’s making people mad. From Australia to Italy, Malaysia to the UK, many of the countries that charge tampon tax now find themselves the targets of a growing campaign to have such levies scrapped.

So how exactly do women pay extra to have periods? And which countries make them do it? Sorry, sisters: It’s more than you might think.

What is tampon tax?

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