GST isn’t a luxury tax, and the current grab bag of exemptions are not all essentials, and do not include all essentials — however you might define that.

If we think taxes should be used to reduce the price of tampons in a non-means tested way, leave gst out of it and just make the subsidy.

Oh, and Coles’ actions are just a marketing stunt. I can”t believe people take them seriously.

Adam and Andrew - you can choose to grow a beard, and stop buying razors. Women don’t have a choice about not buying feminine hygiene products.

And women also use razors, so it’s not just you blokes who are being charged GST on this product. The only time I’ve ever heard of men using tampons is to stop bleeding noses on football fields. I was intrigued, but nobody has ever been able to confirm this for me. Anyone?

Would have expected more “Sheilas” to comment on this article….

This is not political campaigning by Coles, but simply a clever marketing stunt. In reality Coles still pays the GST, but gives customers small discount.

I’m still waiting for them to do the same thing on shaving products as a step against discrimination of white males.

No - the Howard proposal (recently restated by Costello) was for everything to have GST and increased social services to be directed to those in need.

Government handouts, like GST exemption discounts, based on anything other than need are unfair on those in need who must therefore receive less. On the margin those in need must receive less social services in order to fund discounts to those without need who spent on product A rather than product B.

Though many of us would prefer to avoid tax, GST being based on actual consumption, rather than arbitrary definitions of income is, unlike some taxes, progressive. The ALP did a complete about face on GST, Keating originally proposed it. Hawke, in order to try to cut Keating down to size publicly abandoned it. Keating then won the “unwinnable” election by opposing it. Howard to his credit re-introduced what was originally an ALP idea. Australian Democrats insisted on an arbitrary range of feel good exemptions for their support of GST, causing the kind of anomolies (expensive gourmet fish is GST free as fresh food, a working man’s pie or pasty as a manufactured good is taxed etc ) that have uneccessarily complicated what would have been a simple virtually unavoidable tax based on the more you can afford to consume the more tax you must pay.

Exemptions can end up having unintended, unavoidable, costly and uneeded side effects. At a briefing on the GST for Tax lawyers and Accountants in early 2000 by the Australian Taxation Office, where the full range of Australian Democrat introduced complications, anomolies, discounts, and loopholes were discussed, I heard one attendee in exasperation cry out “who on earth voted for them”. Another more wallet focused attendee, to universal attendee acclamation responded “Well we all ought to next time”.

A thoughtless whinge about a price reduction! Indeed it could have been written by a Green given their bizarre ideological hatred of all things corporate.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7501911.stm

Women revolted, and they had to revoke the policy.