Tanning Tax

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Tanning bed customers will pay a little more

for those ultraviolet rays beginning in July - and it has some

salon owners feeling burned.

A provision slipped into the recently-passed health care bill

imposes a 10 percent tax on the use of tanning beds.

Don Nelson owns nine Totally Tan salons in the Twin Cities area.

Nelson predicts business will decline because customers won't pay

extra.

International Smart Tan Network owner Joseph Levy says "the tax

is a microcosm of what went wrong with the entire process" of the

health care bill. Levy says that lawmakers took out a tax on

wealthy doctors and imposed it on middle-class business owners.

The Star Tribune reports federal regulators and dermatologists

are unmoved by the business owners' objections. The deadliest form

of skin cancer, melanoma, rose 6 percent in Minnesota from 2002 to

2006.

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