Discussion of new legislation to repeal the 10 percent tax on tanning salon usage — put into law as a last-second addition to help fund the $940 billion 2010 Health Care overhaul — reached the national airwaves this week, with Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, hitting Fox News on the topic.

Grimm, the lead sponsor of House Resolution 2092, which would repeal the 10 percent indoor tanning tax, slammed the president and Democratic leadership for sneaking a double-digit tax on women-owned businesses and middle-class customers into the bill. “Let’s be very clear: The president said there would be only (new) taxes on millionaires and billionaires,” Rep. Grimm told FOX News “Freedom Watch” program in a June 9 interview. “Yet there are 18,000 small businesses — tanning salon owners — that are being hit with a 10 percent tanning tax.”

Grimm made the point clear: additional taxes on these small businesses is costing the economy jobs, pointing out that reaction to the bill’s introduction has been very positive. “The feedback from small business has been incredible. We’ve gotten an incredible response.”

The “Tan Tax” was added to the Senate Health Care reform bill in a midnight back-room deal just days before the bill’s Senate vote in December 2009 after heavy lobbying of Senate Democrats by the American Academy of Dermatology Association (AADA), the American Medical Association and California-based Allergan Corp., the manufacturer of Botox. The trio succeeded in shifting a 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery procedures, which offer no known health benefits, onto the tanning industry.

“This back-room deal was brokered by the dermatology industry with senators without any due diligence nor any input from tanning retailers,” said International Smart Tan Network Vice President Joseph Levy. “The deal traded an affordable tax on purely elective cosmetic surgery for wealthy Americans and wealthy doctors for an onerous tax that will hurt middle-class women, will force women-owned businesses to close and will cost the country thousands of jobs.”

The 5 percent cosmetic surgery “Botax” would have raised $5 billion over 10 years to help fund health care reform. Smart Tan believes the 10 percent “Tan Tax” would generate less than $170 million in its first year — 40-50 percent less than dermatology lobbyists estimated and 70 percent less than the “Botax” would have generated over 10 years.

The AADA took credit for getting Congress to swap the “Botax” for the “Tan Tax” in a Wall Street Journal article. Ironically, dermatologists who competitively use indoor tanning equipment to treat psoriasis, eczema and acne in their offices — a procedure called “phototherapy” — will be exempt from the proposed “Tan Tax.”

To see the Grimm interview on Fox News click here.