KSHB 41 reporter Elyse Schoenig covers the cities of Shawnee and Mission. She also focuses on issues surrounding the cost of health care, saving for retirement and personal debt. Share your story idea with Elyse.
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Starting Thursday, the state of Missouri is ending its sales tax on products that include diapers, period products and incontinence products.
These changes were part of a bill that cut other taxes.
The National Diaper Bank Network reports infants need up to 12 diapers per day. At $80 to $100 or more per month, per baby, half of all families struggle to afford enough diapers.
Additionally, the Alliance for Period Products reports two in five people with periods struggle to purchase products.
Susan Belger Angulo, co-executive director of Happy Bottoms in Kansas City, said this move is a win for families, women and girls.
“It is helping us promote women and girls and families,” Belger Angulo said.
Happy Bottoms purchases diapers at a reduced cost and distributes those diapers to one of 80 agencies in the community to help families in need.
Belger Angulo said Happy Bottoms is one of eight diaper banks in the state that form the Missouri Coalition of Diaper Banks. The groups helped advance the sales tax elimination.
“If they are able to afford diapers, and they're able to take those diapers to daycare, then families are being able to go to work,” Belger Angulo said
Diapers and period products are currently taxed at 4.225%, not including whatever city or county taxes are.
“Think about our young women who might not have period products,” Belger Angulo said. “They're missing upwards of five days a month of school.”
Madelin Amend said it’s been part of her monthly shopping list for as long as she can remember: diapers for her son and period products for her.
“Probably go through five a day, and then overnight, maybe two overnight,” Amend said. “We definitely go through a lot, and period products. It's like, you know, I go through at least a whole pack, like per period.”
She said these savings have been a long time coming, and it might even allow her to rewrite that monthly grocery list.
“I mean, for both of those items, it’s just ridiculous that we should be taxed,” she said.
Across the state line, Kansas still charges a sales tax on period products and diapers. According to the Missouri Department of Revenue, as long as you are purchasing these products in Missouri or they’re being delivered to a Missouri address, they’ll qualify for the exemption.
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