Beaut.ie to the Rescue: Solving Budget Deficits in One Fell Swoop

If you were listening to me on Dave  Fanning last night you might have heard my bright spark idea to kill two birds with one stone: help rid the country of the scourge of fake tan AND give the country's coffers a dig-out by imposing a 4% levy on all tanning services.

According to the IBPA website, they offer membership to over 2,500 therapists in Ireland. That's by no means representing them all, but we'll take this as a rough figure for the number of spas and salons there are in the country. Now, lets work out how many days a year they're open: lets say six days per week, minus 14 days for holiday periods. That's 298.  Next, lets estimate how many spray tans they're administering per day - I'm going to guess at five. Now, we need to multiply that by cost, which I'll conservatively put at €30 for a full body tan.

Right. Want to know the value of that little lot, then? €111,750,000.

That's a whopper  of a figure - and 4% of it nets Brian Lenihan €4,470,000 for the government's purse. Not bad - sure that'd pay a few bankers salaries, what?