In 2005, New Jersey passed a law issuing a 6% tax on all cosmetic procedures performed. After a trial of 6 years, NJ has found that they were losing overall revenue as patients were leaving the state to get their surgery elsewhere. They are losing surgical revenue, nursing jobs, and opportunities for surgical centers to create jobs.

In a report from NPR, the article stated, “Because New Jersey is one of the only states in the Northeast with the tax, Godek says patients go into other states without the tax to have their procedures performed to save that 6 percent.

Godek is also president of the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons, which commissioned an economic study that suggests New Jersey is losing revenues because of the tax, not gaining them.

“When someone has plastic surgery, they’re not only coming to a plastic surgeon,” Godek says, “they’re utilizing a hospital or a surgery center; they’re staying in local hotels; their family is eating in local restaurants; they’re utilizing pharmacies to fill their prescriptions. So all of that revenue is lost.’”

Hopefully, other states will realize that this is not an effective means to generate revenue. As most patients who undergo cosmetic surgery are middle-class women, there is unfair and biased taxation with this legislation.  We are happy to hear that the cosmetic surgery tax may soon be a thing of the past.