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PHOENIX — State senators voted unanimously Thursday to give a tax break to women who choose to install what one lawmaker calls "non-original equipment."

The state Department of Revenue charges 5.6 percent sales tax on breast implants put in for strictly cosmetic reasons. Implants for reconstruction after surgery or to correct a medical problem are exempt from the tax.

That distinction annoyed Sen. Pamela Gorman, R-Anthem.

"We're just trying to say: 'Listen. If you have surgery and they have to put anything in your body that wasn't original to when you were born, it doesn't make it a product,' " Gorman said.

"It's still a service," she continued. "And we're just trying to clarify that."

SB 1143 blocks the Revenue Department from collecting the tax on "prosthetic devices prescribed or recommended by a health professional." It also applies to some other items, such as "lap bands," which are placed around the stomach of people who are obese and which the department also concluded are taxable.

But the big-ticket item is implants to enhance breast size or shape.

Although the number of implants done each year wasn't available, Becky Hill, lobbyist for Allergan, an international company that makes medical devices, estimated the bill would cost the state $300,000 to $400,000 a year.

Hill said there are a couple of problems with the tax.

First, she said, there can be a "gray area" of what work is reconstructive and what is purely cosmetic when a woman has a "breast malformity."

More problematic, Hill said, is what happens when the Department of Revenue questions why the tax isn't paid. The only way to figure out if the implants should be taxable would be to audit a doctor's files — and, potentially, each patient's files.

Patient privacy rules restrict outside access to patients' files to matters such as "homeland security" or where there is a question of insurance fraud.

"It's not to collect a retail tax at the state level," Hill said.

Gorman said the legislation makes sense because patients are buying medical care. "Surgery is a service," she said, which is not taxable.

She also said the Legislature needs to make sure the Department of Revenue, which is under pressure to find more revenues, isn't going to far — "trying to dig in and find taxes where they don't exist."

The bill now goes to the House.