Calculator reveals how much money you’ve spent on your period so far

It’s not good news, says Laura Hampson
Shutterstock / Elena Kharichkina

In the UK, tampons and sanitary towels are currently taxed at five per cent.

So the BBC has released a Tampon Tax calculator that can figure out how much money you will have spent on sanitary products in your lifetime and how much tax you have paid.

For example, if you are 26 and your period began when you were 10 it is estimated you have spent £658.56 on products and £31.36 was the Value Added Tax (VAT).

Or, if you are 48 and your period began when you were 14, you will have spent an estimated £1,431.49 on products of which £140.20 is VAT.

This calculator is based on information from the NHS, assuming women have 13 periods per year on a 28-day cycle and they use 22 sanitary products per period.

However, these figures seem to be on the low side as prior research has found that women can expect to spend an estimated £18,000 on sanitary products in their lifetime.

Luxuries equivalent to the 18k women spend on periods in a lifetime

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The UK first added a standard 10 per cent of VAT to sanitary products in 1973 when it joined the European Economic Community.

In 1974, VAT was lowered to 8 per cent, before rising to 15 per cent in 1979 and to 17.5 per cent in 1991. It was lowered to five per cent in 2001 after a campaign.

Women in the UK pay around £15 million in VAT each year and this is something supermarkets are combatting.

In July this year, Tesco cut prices on nearly 100 menstrual products to shoulder the five per cent VAT – Waitrose and Morrisons followed suit in August.

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