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The William Mason High School
Volume 7
NEWS BRIEF
Taste of Cincinnati next weekend Over Memorial Day weekend, May 29-31, Cincinnati will host its 32nd annual free “Taste of Cincinnati” event downtown. The event covers six blocks of Fifth Street, spanning from Race Street to Broadway. Featuring over 100 types of food from restaurants serving all genres of food (ranging from “pub fare” to “Cajun/Creole” and everything in between), the event will also include several live performances, from musical to comedic, and a Memorial Day procession. The booths at the “Taste” will offer various samples from the restaurants they represent, with each of the samples costing a minimum of $1, and not exceeding $5. Restaurant entrants can also be eligible for “Best of Taste” Awards, given annually. The “Taste” is reported as the “nation’s longest-running culinary arts festival,” according to the “Taste of Cincinnati” website, and administrators of the event are expecting roughly 500,000 people to attend.
May 21, 2010
Issue 8
Healthcare hazard
TODAY
Eighth-graders visit high school today Two groups of eighth-graders will visit the high school today, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. According to the schedule provided by Student Activities Director Lorri Fox-Allen, eighth-graders will walk over from the middle school, watch a presentation including a video tour of the building, eat lunch in the commons (at special lunches occurring before A lunch and after C) and tour the building with Student Government, Senior Sibs and Student Ambassador members.
OHSAA track and field meet today Atrium Stadium is holding the Ohio High School Athletic Association Southwest District Track and Field meet today. This district meet qualifies athletes who place in the top four in their event (either individually or in a relay), for the Regional meet. As of print date, 18 area teams are attending.
The Chronicle William Mason High School 6100 S. Mason Montgomery Road Mason, Ohio 45040
photo by Rachel Schowalter
Tanners feel the initial impact of new health care plan Ellen Duffer | Associate Editor Indoor tanning is about to get expensive. Following a July implementation of the 10 percent federal tax on ultraviolet (UV) indoor tanning services, many salons will close if they do not defer the tax to customers, according to William Klum, owner of Maineville’s Tandemonium Tanning Salon and Spa. Collection of the “Tan Tax,” Klum said, will result in increasingly frequent closings of tanning salons that make too small a profit to remain financially stable while assuming the burden of the tax. “Because this is a federal tax, it’ll affect everybody on a national level,” Klum said. “On the client side, they’re going to suffer, because I’m sure there [are] going to be [fewer] tanning salons for them to go to, so [it will] inconvenience them. Every tanning salon is going to pass on some sort of cost to the client. ...Some of the surveys done by some of these lobbyist groups I belong to say that anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of tanning salons will go out of business.” As more than two-thirds of tanning salon owners are female, according to CNN.com, and 70 percent of clients are white women between the ages of 16 and 49, according to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), the “Tan Tax” will largely affect women. According to Klum, this proves the tax’s discriminatory nature.
“[The ‘Tan Tax’ is] kind of set up like a sin tax,” Klum said. “There’s a tax on alcohol; there’s a tax on tobacco. What the problem is that...alcohol and tobacco [taxes cross] all the gender lines, [cross] all the racial lines...So, [they’re] just fair tax[es]. A hundred percent of [tanning salons] are small business[es]. I don’t know any tanning salons considered a large business, as far as the...government’s determination. So, right there, you’re hitting a gender-specific business owner, not to mention the client.” The “Tan Tax,” an element of the recently passed health care bill, comes as a replace-
“Anywhere from 20 to 30 percent of tanning salons will go out of business.” -William Klum, owner of Tandemonium ment for the originally included “Bo-Tax,” a five percent tax on voluntary cosmetic surgery. Although “Bo-Tax” was expected to raise $5.8 billion in federal revenue in the next decade, while the “Tan Tax’s” expected turnaround is $2.7 billion, according to The New York Times, David Pariser, President of the AAD, said he hopes the “Tan Tax” will deter potential customers from partaking in the dangerous
trend, thus reducing the amount of health care dollars spent on skin cancer treatment; exposure of individuals younger than age 35 to the UV radiation produced by indoor tanning, according to the AAD, increases the chance of developing melanoma by 75 percent. Alternative tanning options that avoid contributing to the risk of skin cancer may become more popular with the institution of the UV-associated “Tan Tax,” according to Klum, who said he has already seen an increase in the purchase of tanning packages that refrain from using UV light. “I’m [also] an airbrush tanning salon; that is probably about 20 percent of my business,” Klum said. “So...I think that will only grow over time and UV tanning will be [used] less and less.” Those customers choosing to continue use of UV-assisted indoor tanning after July 1, however, are willing to accept increased prices, Klum said, though they would take action to reduce the tax’s financial impact through less time spent in the tanning beds. “For the most part, people would say that they would pay the extra ten percent,” Klum said. “Probably what they would do is tan less, or buy smaller packages.”
see TANNING TAX on page 5