Opinion

Hello, MDCDs. Goodbye, tampon tax.

Now they will be called “menstrual discharge collection devices.”

Yuck, you say?

About time, I say.

My nonprofit, Period Law, has been fighting to end the sales tax on menstrual products since 2016. We made our case to the national sales tax group that “feminine hygiene products” is vague and unhelpful. More important, it’s confusing to male legislators.

A little womansplaining might be called for: These items — tampons, menstrual pads, cups and liners — are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as medical devices and tagged by the IRS as qualified medical expenses. They are essential for health. Like the many other devices and drugs people buy tax-free across the country, they deserve to be treated as the necessities they are.

Our hope is that the clarity of this unwieldy term will end the unfair, unconstitutional “tampon tax” for good. From now on, during hearings in male-dominated state legislatures, feminine hygiene will no longer be up for debate. The question in front of tax, revenue and finance committees will be whether a menstrual discharge collection device (okay, let’s call them MDCDs) is a medical device that has been improperly left off the sales tax exemption list. In remarks to the Indiana Senate, bill sponsor Shelli Yoder called the taxing of MDCDs a “60-year mistake.”

The name change could prevent a recurrence of what happened during a 2021 Wyoming hearing when a state senator argued before an overwhelmingly male revenue committee that removing the tax on feminine hygiene products “favors one sex over the other” and proposed including male hygiene products, too, such as “soaps and foot powder.” The bill unsurprisingly died. The term “menstrual discharge collection device” effectively eliminates the argument about whether there is a comparable category of medically necessary products used only by men. (Spoiler: There isn’t.)

After I presented on this issue at last summer’s National Conference of State Legislatures, a male state sales tax expert pulled me aside with a tip: “The most compelling thing you said is that people will bleed through their clothes without these products. Some people may not have known that.” It was news to me that all men don’t know this, but upon reflection, it makes sense. We women have been very good at hiding the reality of having periods — including that they often start unexpectedly.

If we’ve received any pushback on menstrual discharge collection devices, it’s from women. One female tax administrator called to share that her female colleagues found the term “cringy.” Once she witnessed unanimous approval at the November Streamlined Sales Tax board meeting — the majority of attendees being men — she let me know she was now on board.

Already this year, Kentucky and Indiana have introduced bills using the MDCD terminology. All states but Idaho have at one point introduced a bill to end the tampon tax — and the most recent state to end its tax is Texas. The tax comptroller there described the tax as “archaic” and successfully urged the Republican state leadership to stop collecting close to $30 million a year — but less than 0.01 percent of state revenue — on purchases of these necessities.

In a year of ongoing budget surpluses, there’s no reason the remaining states shouldn’t follow the example of Texas and the other 19 states that have ended the tampon tax since 2016. As the new name makes clear, MDCDs are nondiscretionary purchases used monthly by women for an average of 40 years. Perhaps if we had called them menstrual discharge collection devices years ago, we wouldn’t be fighting this battle today.