Among the many items buried in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a new federal tax on indoor tanning salons that added 10 percent to customers’ bills.
The “tanning tax,” according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), originally was projected to generate some $2.7 billion in new revenue through 2019$1 billion in the years 2011 through 2014 alonewhich would be used to offset part of the estimated $940 billion that Obamacare was expected to cost through 2019.
The tax committee’s rosy projection was way off. Instead of $1 billion in revenue during its first four years, the tanning-salon tax has actually produced only about $362 million, slightly more than one-third of the JCT’s forecast.