Our Paperless Society

The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 may not be working. Just this past year, our representatives in Congress passed three bills totaling 3,632 pages, about 3,600 more than the laws established in the 1914 Federal Trade Commission and the 1935 Social Security Act.

In looking for new taxes to pay for the recently-issued health bill, Congress considered a tax on cosmetic surgery. The American Medical Association convinced our lawmakers that they were misguided in their thinking and that, because a probable long-term eclipse of the sun would force many people indoors looking for ultraviolet radiation, a tax on tanning salons would do the trick.

The Department of the Treasury has just issued Regulations dealing with the collection and payment of a 10% excise tax imposed on providers of indoor tanning services, designed to raise $2.7 billion, the new law, known as Section 10907 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, (Public Law 111-148 124 Stat. 119 (2010)) was added to the Internal Revenue Code as Section 50000B, obviously.

Thanks to the Paperwork Reduction Act, the Regulations can be found between pages 33,683 and 33,688 in the Federal Register. It is anticipated that all indoor tanning salons will have copies of the Regulations available for customers to read while they are being irradiated. Because there is a shortage of cranes needed to lift the Register, the Book of the Month Club has agreed to pick the Regulations as their August selection and publish them in an abridged edition… on paper.