Tax-Deductible Cosmetic Surgery!

With a week left to do taxes, you’re probably scrambling to finish your 2011 tax return and deductibles.

Meanwhile, countless South Americans are deducting their breast implants.

Earlier this year, Brazil made cosmetic surgery—including breast implants, liposuction, and tummy tucks—deductible from income taxes. The deductions are retroactive to procedures performed as far back as 2004!

Brazilian officials apparently did the math and now believe the increase in income for medical personnel will more than compensate for the projected loss of revenue. “We concluded that cosmetic surgeries are also about health, physical and mental, and should be included in the list of deductible expenses,” Brazil’s tax boss, Joaquim Adir,told Bloomberg. With Brazil being the world’s 2nd largest consumer of cosmetic surgery, this may very well bring in the much-needed income to Brazil.

The U.S. government recently considered the idea of a 5 percent levy on cosmetic procedures—the “Bo-tax,” as it was nicknamed—but dropped the notion in favor of a tanning-bed tax. Nevertheless, Connecticut charges a 6.35 percent premium on plastic surgery, and Washington state and California are considering getting in on the tax act, too.

Those states should think twice, says Gary Smotrich, a past president of the New Jersey Society of Plastic Surgeons. His state, which currently levies a tax, will begin gradually phasing it out this year, after watching patients go to tax-free New York and Pennsylvania instead. The losers, says Smotrich, are not the much-talked about 1 percent, but “the middle-class women who are the majority of patients for these procedures.”