This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at F and M chapter.
Her Campus F&M is excited to announce that we are sister chapters to Her Campus Gettysburg! This week we conducted TWO article exchanges that you can check out here and here. Check out this article by one of Her Campus Gettysburg’s writer!
Congress and Everything Spooky
Scary Facts About Government Involvement in this Sweet Holiday
With 41.1 Million trick or treaters nationwide, it’s an unwritten fact that the government has to play some involvement in the Halloween industry.
- Kid’s costumes (the ones loaded with “synthetic fibers”) are heavily taxed by both state government and the federal government.
- Statistics compute that about 47.82% of the cost of an average 25 dollar Halloween costume is government taxes.
- Every Halloween, approximately 2 billion dollars is spent on candy.
- 30.81% of the 2 billion dollars is government taxes being taken directly from the candy bags of the nation’s trick-or-treaters.
- The US Department of Energy studied and estimated the amount of waste produced by carving Jack-O-Lanterns at 254 tons of municipal waste, and strongly advises celebrating the holiday in a different way.
- 17 states tax candy at higher rates than average food and drink.
Sources:
https://www.theadvocates.org/halloween-share-scary-facts-government-2/
https://www.mercatus.org/expert_commentary/trick-or-treat-governments-halloween-tax-costume
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2017/cb17-ff18-halloween.html