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The Tampon Tax Is Still a Thing — Here’s Which States Still Charge It

Groceries Are Tax-Free. Tampons Often Aren’t. Here’s Why That Matters.

In most of the United States, you can walk into a grocery store and fill your cart with bread, canned soup, fresh produce, and a bottle of orange juice — and pay no sales tax whatsoever. Those items have long been classified as necessities, exempt from the tax code’s reach. But if you also need to buy a box of tampons or a package of pads, there’s a solid chance you’ll be charged a sales tax rate comparable to what you’d pay on a new television or a piece of furniture.

That is the tampon tax in a nutshell: not a special punitive levy invented to target women, but a quiet, persistent categorization of menstrual products as non-essential goods in state tax codes — a classification that persists in nearly a third of U.S. states as of 2026. It’s a policy detail that tends to provoke strong reactions once people hear about it, which is probably why momentum to repeal it has been building steadily for nearly a decade. This piece breaks down exactly what the tampon tax is, where it still exists, why it matters, and what the debate looks like on both sides of the aisle.

What Is the Tampon Tax, Exactly?

The term “tampon tax” refers specifically to the application of standard state sales tax to menstrual hygiene products — tampons, sanitary pads, panty liners, menstrual cups, and similar items. To be precise: this is not a special tax invented for period products. No state singles them out with a unique surcharge. Rather, the tampon tax exists because of what these products are not — they are not classified as tax-exempt necessities the way groceries, prescription drugs, and certain medical devices typically are (Alliance for Period Supplies, 2024).

Sales tax policy in the United States is set at the state level, and states have long maintained lists of exempt goods. The logic underlying most exemptions is straightforward: certain items are so fundamental to daily life or human health that taxing them places an undue burden on lower-income households. Groceries and prescription medications sit at the top of that list in most states. Menstrual products, historically, have not.

The broader category sometimes discussed alongside the tampon tax is the “pink tax” — a term that refers not to an actual tax, but to the documented pattern of products marketed toward women (razors, shampoo, deodorant) costing more than equivalent products marketed toward men (Alliance for Period Supplies, 2024). The tampon tax is the one concrete, legally enforceable piece of that larger pricing disparity, because it is written into state law.

A Brief History — From Minnesota to Missouri

The history of tampon tax reform in the United States is longer than most people realize. Minnesota exempted all health products from state sales tax in 1981, becoming the first state to effectively end the tampon tax. It would be a decade before another state followed suit.

Pennsylvania became the second state to stop taxing tampons in 1991, when the products were placed under the state’s “paper goods” category alongside toilet paper and diapers. New Jersey joined in 2005, becoming the third state to eliminate the tax.

For the next decade, progress was essentially stalled. Then 2016 marked a turning point. The elimination of the period tax did not pick up significant speed until 2016, when Illinois and New York ended their own period taxes. New York’s bill passed both legislative chambers unanimously, with its Republican sponsor noting it was a win “for women who have largely shouldered the burden of the tax for generations” (NBC News, 2016).

From there, the map began changing rapidly. Florida eliminated the tax in 2017. Connecticut followed. Maryland and Nevada acted in 2018. California, Ohio, and Rhode Island moved in 2019. The years 2021 and 2022 saw a cascade: Vermont, Maine, Michigan, Louisiana, New Mexico, Washington, Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, and Virginia all repealed their tampon taxes in that period (Alliance for Period Supplies, 2024).

More recently, South Carolina passed a bill to exempt period products from taxation in May 2024, Texas eliminated the tax effective September 2023, and Missouri passed its repeal in May 2025, with the law taking effect August 28, 2025. Alabama passed a temporary exemption in May 2025, effective September 1, 2025 through August 31, 2028.

Minnesota was the first to eliminate tampon taxes, in 1981; Texas was among the most recent. Momentum to remove pink taxes has generally increased among states in the past 10 years.

The Current Landscape — Which States Still Tax Period Products?

As of early 2026, the picture has shifted meaningfully but remains incomplete. Currently, 18 states charge sales tax on period products as of March 20, 2026. The sales taxes range from 4% to 7%, with Indiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee at the higher end. Five U.S. states — Alaska, Delaware, Montana, New Hampshire, and Oregon — do not have a statewide sales tax at all, meaning menstrual products are tax-free there by default.

The 18 states that still levy sales tax on menstrual products as of 2026 include: Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (Alliance for Period Supplies, 2026; Avalara, 2026).

Tennessee, Indiana, and Mississippi are the three states with the highest tax rates for menstrual supplies, at seven percent. That 7% applies on top of any local sales taxes a county or city might also impose, meaning the effective rate can exceed 10% in some jurisdictions.

North Carolina is among the 18 states still taxing menstrual products as of 2026, though multiple bills introduced in that state’s legislature seek to change that — with proposed effective dates ranging from July 1, 2026 to October 1, 2026.

It is worth noting an important caveat in the data. Utah eliminated its tampon tax in December 2019 but reversed course less than a year later. Utah axed its tampon tax in 2019 but reinstated it the following year after outcry that the law also raised taxes on many other items. Utah currently taxes period products. This example illustrates that legislative wins are not always permanent.

The Policy Argument for Repeal

The case for exempting menstrual products from sales tax rests on a few interlocking arguments: equity, health necessity, and logical consistency with how states already treat comparable goods.

The necessities argument. Period products are taxed at a similar rate to items like decor, electronics, makeup, and toys — yet 33 states (plus Washington D.C.) exempt food from their general sales tax and 5 states tax food at a lower rate than other goods because people understand food is a basic necessity. Tampons and pads, advocates argue, belong in the necessity column alongside food and medicine — not alongside discretionary consumer goods. You cannot choose not to menstruate; you can choose not to buy a television.

The equity and regressivity argument. Sales taxes as a category are regressive — meaning they consume a higher share of income from lower-income households than from wealthier ones. It is estimated that 16.9 million menstruating women in the United States live in poverty, two-thirds of whom are low-income and food-insecure women who cannot afford basic menstrual products such as pads, tampons, and menstrual cups. When tax policy treats a health necessity as a luxury, the people most harmed are those with the least financial flexibility.

The gender equity argument. Menstruation is a biological reality for people who menstruate, not a lifestyle choice. The tampon tax is controversial because almost all U.S. states exempt non-luxury necessities such as groceries or prescriptions from sales tax, and yet most states have historically charged tax on menstrual products — despite these items being considered a necessity. The asymmetry — in which items predominantly purchased by women are taxed while broadly used necessities are not — has led many legal scholars and legislators to characterize the tampon tax as a form of gender-based economic discrimination (Brinkley & Niebuhr, 2023).

The Policy Argument Against Repeal

The case against repeal tends to focus on fiscal consequences and the broader mechanics of tax policy, rather than a defense of categorizing period products as luxuries.

Revenue considerations. Every tax exemption narrows a state’s tax base, and narrower tax bases tend to force higher rates on the goods that remain taxable. Economists forecasted that South Carolina could have lost $5.9 million in state revenue and local governments about $1.4 million if the tax were abolished — against a backdrop of the state historically collecting more than $4 billion in annual sales tax revenue. Critics of exemptions argue that special-carve-outs, however well-intentioned, compound over time and create structural budget challenges.

The targeting problem. Some economists note that a tax exemption is a relatively blunt instrument for addressing period poverty specifically. Reducing or eliminating consumption tax on menstrual hygiene products may reduce the tax burden faced by women in certain contexts, but it is not well-targeted at the poor. The benefits would accrue as much or more to high-consumption households, who spend more in absolute terms on such products. This makes it an expensive policy choice for addressing period poverty compared to more targeted mechanisms like cash transfers.

Political complexity. Some opposition reflects not hostility to the goal but skepticism about the method. Some state legislators question whether the tampon tax should go away, with some noting it is “just such a small amount of money” or questioning why it is needed — while others point to tighter budget cycles as a barrier to action.

It’s worth noting, however, that these fiscal and targeting arguments apply equally to countless other goods that states have already chosen to exempt — including groceries, over-the-counter medications, and farm equipment. Critics of the “revenue” objection often point out that the revenue at stake is rarely substantial relative to total state budgets.

The Human Cost — Period Poverty in the United States

Behind the policy debate is a documented public health and economic reality. Period poverty is the inability to access clean menstrual hygiene products, and it can negatively impact the lives of menstruators. Difficulty affording menstrual products can cause women and girls to stay home from school and work, with lasting consequences on their education and economic opportunities.

The scale of the problem in the United States is not trivial. A 2023 survey revealed that approximately one in four teenagers who menstruate in the U.S. cannot afford menstrual products, with this lack of access often preventing them from attending school or work.

One national survey among college students found that 14.2% of respondents reported experiencing period poverty in the year preceding the survey, while an additional 10% experienced it every month. That study also documented period poverty being associated with a higher likelihood of symptoms consistent with moderate or severe depression.

Over a lifetime, period products in the U.S. cost a total of around $6,000 per person, according to research published in 2021 — and that’s before tax. Adding a 4–7% sales tax on top of that creates a meaningful cumulative burden over the course of a person’s menstruating years. The average woman spends about $20 on feminine hygiene products per cycle, adding up to about $18,000 over her lifetime.

The Global Context — How the U.S. Compares

The United States is far from alone in grappling with this issue, and the international trajectory of tampon tax reform offers useful context. Since Kenya became the first country to scrap the tax on menstrual products in 2004, at least 17 countries have followed — including Mexico, Britain, and Namibia — and another 17 countries in Europe have reduced their VAT on sanitary products.

The tampon tax was abolished in Britain on January 1, 2021, following Brexit, resulting in a zero rate of VAT on women’s sanitary products. Australia repealed its 10% tax on tampons and pads on January 1, 2019, after an 18-year campaign, after all states and territories agreed to make sanitary products explicitly exempt from its goods and services tax.

In 2022, Scotland became the first nation in the world to make tampons and sanitary pads free and available at designated public places. That policy goes considerably beyond a tax exemption — it positions menstrual products alongside other publicly provided health necessities.

By 2023, almost 50 countries had cut the rate or scrapped consumption taxes on menstrual hygiene products, motivated by goals of enhancing gender equality. The trend is global and broadly bipartisan in character, driven less by ideological alignment than by a shared recognition that taxing biological necessities is a difficult position to defend.

The Advocacy Landscape — Who Is Pushing for Change?

A robust network of advocacy organizations has shaped the legislative push at both the state and national levels.

The Alliance for Period Supplies maintains the most comprehensive real-time tracker of state-level tampon tax status and has been central to grassroots lobbying efforts. Their state-by-state database and legislator contact tools have helped local advocates translate national awareness into concrete state-level action (Alliance for Period Supplies, 2024).

PERIOD (the organization, also known as the PERIOD movement) has worked particularly among younger advocates and on college campuses, pushing simultaneously for tax repeal and for free menstrual products in schools. In 25 states and Washington, D.C., period products are now required to be provided to students for free.

Corporate actors have also entered the advocacy space. CVS Health announced a partnership with Period Law and PERIOD to support elimination of the tampon tax, and simultaneously lowered the cost of its store-brand period products by 25 percent in states that still levy the tax. While such moves are partly reputational positioning, they also place real downward pressure on prices in the short term.

Legislative sponsorship of repeal bills has been notably bipartisan. In New York, the 2016 repeal bill was sponsored by a Republican state senator and passed unanimously. In Texas, then-Governor Greg Abbott publicly supported the repeal. The ACLU of Indiana has advocated for repeal in that state, framing it as both a civil rights and economic justice issue (ACLU of Indiana, 2025).

State-by-State Momentum — Where Bills Are Moving

Even among the 18 states that still have the tampon tax, the legislative picture is not static. Several states have active bills in 2025–2026 sessions.

North Carolina has the most visible ongoing legislative effort. Four bills introduced in 2026 seek to exempt menstrual products from North Carolina sales tax, with proposed effective dates ranging from July 1 to October 1, 2026. The bills vary in their definitions — with one notably proposing to restrict the exemption to products that contain no intentionally added PFAS chemicals.

Indiana remains one of the most scrutinized holdouts given its 7% tax rate — the highest in the nation alongside Mississippi and Tennessee. The ACLU of Indiana has called the continued taxation of period products “overdue” for repeal, noting that Indiana joins a shrinking list of states that haven’t acted (ACLU of Indiana, 2025).

Georgia, Arkansas, Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Idaho have all seen bills introduced in recent sessions without passage. The pattern in many of these states mirrors what advocates describe as a predictable cycle: a bill is introduced, it gains some committee attention, revenue concerns are raised, and it dies — often to be reintroduced the following year. Strong state-level grassroots efforts to end the tampon tax are underway in Georgia, and similar legislative battles are active or anticipated in Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, and other states where bills have repeatedly died.

One wrinkle in the current legislative environment: one of the things that states are grappling with right now is tense and stricter budget cycles, creating a fear of revenue loss. As several states have moved to cut income taxes, the political appetite for additional sales tax exemptions — each of which shrinks the revenue base — has narrowed.

What This Means and What Comes Next

The tampon tax is one of those policy debates that, once explained, tends to produce a fairly clear popular reaction: the idea that biology constitutes a “luxury” taxable at the same rate as electronics strikes most people as odd at best. Yet nearly two decades after New York’s unanimous repeal vote signaled something like a political consensus moment, 18 states still haven’t acted.

The momentum is real and unmistakable. In 2022, 22 states still taxed menstrual products, down from 40 states in 2016. That is significant progress over a decade — the number of taxing states has been cut roughly in half. The trajectory points toward eventual nationwide elimination, though state budget pressures and legislative inertia mean that timeline remains uncertain.

What might accelerate the pace? Federal legislation has been proposed intermittently — bills like the Menstrual Equity for All Act have sought to establish a federal framework — but sales tax is fundamentally a state-level domain, and federal options remain limited. The most effective levers have consistently been state-level grassroots pressure, bipartisan bill sponsorship, and the demonstration effect of neighboring states acting without fiscal catastrophe.

The economic argument, ultimately, may be the strongest one. The revenue amounts at stake for most states — a few million dollars annually in most cases — are small relative to total state budgets, and states that have acted have not reported meaningful fiscal impacts. What they have done is removed a policy that, however inadvertently, coded a biological necessity as a discretionary indulgence — and charged women and girls accordingly for 40-plus years.

Whether the remaining 18 states act in the next legislative cycle or the next decade, the direction of travel is clear. The tampon tax, as a durable policy choice, is running out of political runway.

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