Comments on: What Would a Soda Tax Mean for Missouri?

By: The Lesson Applied » Inefficaciousness: Hot New Trend?

The Lesson Applied » Inefficaciousness: Hot New Trend? — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:48:51 +0000

[...] taxes would easily generate a considerable amount of income for state and local governments. In a previous post on Show Me Daily, I used a revenue calculator for soft drink taxes from the Rudd Center for Food [...]

By: Christine Harbin

Christine Harbin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:15:46 +0000

Thanks for the comments, Josh and Tony.

I’ve heard of several different proposals. Some include diet sodas, others exempt them. It would seem to to me that energy drinks like Gatorade and Redbull would be prime targets for the tax. Whatever the government thinks is good for us, apparently.

Yesterday, the WSJ published an op-ed by the CEO of Coca-Cola. I like his argument that government should encourage healthy lifestyle habits instead of demonizing industries.

Here’s the link: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574455464120581696.html

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 04:37:47 +0000

That’s nearly half the price I pay for soda at Costco. You bet I would decrease my consumption, but that would depend on if the government saw fit to tax soda’s substitutes in a similar manner.

How would they treat flavored water or Gatorade?

By: Josh Smith

Josh Smith — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:05:11 +0000

The soda tax is a terrible idea. Sales taxes in general are less burdensome than other forms of taxation, but targeting specific products for economic or moral reasons is really bad practice.

By: Christine Harbin

Christine Harbin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 17:01:39 +0000

I’d like to offer a point of clarification.

In the revenue calculator for soft drink taxes, the unit of taxation is cents per ounce. Therefore, in the scenario that I described, a can of soda would be taxed $0.12 and a 12-pack of soda would be $1.44.

This leads me to believe that consumers would be more responsive than I implied in my last paragraph.