Trenton, N.J. — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has signed a bill that repeals and will phase out the state’s 6 percent “BoTax” — the nation’s first such tax on cosmetic procedures.
The bill’s sponsors, Sen. Joseph Kyrillos (R-Monmouth) and Sen. Paul Sarlo (D-Bergen), said the eight-year-old tax is not only a “burden” to patients, but to the medical offices that must collect the tax and state agencies that enforce it, according to NJ.com.
The bill [http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2010/bills/s2000/1988_i1.htm] cleared the General Assembly [http://www.njleg.state.nj.us] unanimously and the state Senate by a vote of 33-2 in the last hours of New Jersey’s 2011 legislative session last week, Forbes reports. A 2006 attempt to repeal the tax outright was vetoed by Christie’s predecessor, Gov. Jon Corzine.
The new bill will phase out the state’s 6 percent tax on gross receipts from cosmetic medical procedures, dropping it to 4 percent on March 1 and to 2 percent on July 1, and eliminating it altogether on July 1, 2013.
The tax has generated between $9.8 million and $11.2 million a year, dedicated to a special state fund that pays for medical care for the poor, NJSpotlight.com reports. According to Forbes, that’s less than half the annual $24 million the tax was projected to raise when the state enacted it in 2004.
NJSpotlight.com reports that the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons [http://www.njsocietyofplasticsurg.org] has lobbied for repeal of the tax ever since it was imposed, arguing that it encourages patients to leave New Jersey and have procedures done in Pennsylvania and New York to avoid the tariff.
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