Tanning salons are feeling the heat from a movement by state legislators to tax them and give the money raised to skin cancer research.

House Bill 419, sponsored by Rep. Melvin R. Brown, R-Coalville, sought to impose a 10 percent tax on admissions or user fees at tanning salons to fund a new Melanoma Cancer Research Fund. The fund would be administered by the Utah Department of Health as a grant-making body to benefit organizations researching melanoma.

Although the bill failed to advance past the House Health and Human Services Committee this morning, the committee resolved with a 4-2 vote to reconsider the bill this summer after further study of the issues behind it.

The National Cancer Institute recommends people avoid artificial sources of UV radiation, like tanning beds, as they can increase the risk of melanoma. There are more than half a dozen businesses offering tanning in Tooele County.

Sherri Andregg, owner of Sherri’s Under the Sun in Tooele, said the proposed tax unfairly picks on one industry.

“The whole thing is terrible,” she said. “I mean, you go out in the sun and you can get UV rays.”

Andregg said the tax would mean an added cost to tanning salons that will be passed onto customers, hurting the salons’ business at a time when they can ill afford it. She said business at her salon, which has been open since 2001, has been slow recently because of the down economy. To make matters worse, she’s been faced with rising costs at the same time.

“Everything’s gone up in price — your lotions, everything, because of the economy,” she said, adding a typical spring pickup in customers hasn’t fully materialized. “There are still people holding back because tanning is a luxury.”

Hillary Black, manager for D-Lux Tan, said the tax would hurt her Tooele salon in a major way.

“It’d probably affect us pretty big with the economy right now,” she said.

Black said the salon is starting to get busier this time of year and is still doing all right, considering the slumping economy.

Lisa Hunter, owner of Foxy Bronze in Stansbury Park, said the tax would be an added burden at an already tough time.

“We feel like we’re taxed so much as it is as a business that it’s almost killing us,” she said.

Hunter added that a tanning lotion company recently came out with a bottle of lotion that helps fund breast cancer research through sales of the product.

“If they did something like that we’d be more than happy to help promote research like that, but just having a general tax makes it hard as a small business,” she said.

And business is definitely slower than at this time last year, Hunter said.

“Unfortunately we can’t provide the jobs that we have in years past, but all our girls have a job now and we’re still in business,” she said.

So far the salon has not increased prices to keep up with rising costs.

“We’re hoping the 10 percent tax won’t be enough to do that [make us raise prices], but we always keep our options open,” she said.

March and April are the busiest months of the year at Hunter’s salon, she said, as people prepare to go on cruises and vacations, and tan to put winter behind them. But she added that people come to her salon for more than just aesthetic reasons. Some want to combat their winter blues, increase vitamin D intake, or reduce acne.

Also, spray-on tans — an alternative to using tanning beds — are gaining in popularity in Tooele County, according to several salon operators.

“I did three of them last week,” Black said. “A lot of people don’t want the UV rays so they just do the spray tan.”

Foxy Bronze also offers spray-on tanning, which Hunter said accounts for about 20 percent of her business. Some people even do what she calls “double-dipping,” a practice in which a customer will tan in a tanning bed and then get a spray-on tan to achieve added color.

She said over the last year she has seen an increase in the popularity of spray-on tans, especially this season.

“The one month our Mystic [spray-on tan] booth went down for maintenance, it was a high demand,” she said. “The day we got it back running we had about eight spray-on tans in just one shift, and our shifts are only seven hours long.”

Andregg’s business also offer spray-on tans, although it accounts for only 5 percent of her business, she said.

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com