This 'sugar tax' crap is doing my head in!

Soldato
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Why did you miss the child obesity bit?

Surely to be claimed a success child obesity levels have to drop.

I didn't miss the child obesity part, I'm not sure if you are trolling or genuinely didn't interpenetrate the sentence correctly.

The word that makes the difference is 'contribute'. AKA the levy on its own is not designed to reduce childhood obesity and is a part of a much wider long term strategy aimed at tackling the issue.

The levy's only objective was to remove added some sugar from soft drinks or tax them to change people's purchasing behaviour, its done that and no one can really argue otherwise.

The money that it raises is then being pumped in to fund other parts of the strategy like education. If you don't believe me I suggest you read whats been published on gov.uk
 
Caporegime
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So you pay the tax on coca cola if that's what you want.... but it was never about raising revenue for the treasury. It was estimated to bring in £520 million in its first year and then reduce to £500m and £455m in years 2 and 3. £500 million is pocket change these days. Given the shifts in the industry I doubt it will bring anything close to that and I expect there will also be compliance issues with imports.

People hate paying tax so if you want to discourage people from buying a certain product without just banning it then you tax it, its pretty much regulation 101. Almost every product but Coca Cola has changed its recipe so it falls outside the scope of the levy. I think you can objectively say it has met what it set out to do. Smoking is another good example of this, taxing the hell out of tobacco products has done more for reducing smoking than any other measure.

Directly off Gov.uk


BTW I never said I was for or against the tax. But when you look at the aims of the levy its pretty clear its already met if not exceeded its objectives which is to reduce the levels of sugar in soft drinks.

Well yeah of course the .gov website says that! Public health is perhaps the no1 excuse used to raise revenue, as if 500mill is seen as nothing by the government, they are up in arms about comparitvely tiny tax evasion lol.

Taxation isn't what reduced tobacco consumption either, it was the research proving it caused cancer.
 
Caporegime
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So why does it continue to go down with tax increases rather than being stable?

Because societal changes see a continuing shift in the attitude towards tobacco, resulting in ever decreasing consumption, it's not cause and effect.

Minimum proscribed sugar content would be an epic mind feild and far more complicated.

For one simple point added sugar or natural sugar?

And then if you say added sugar how do you define added sugar not natural sugar if I change the reciptax wad the simplest solution

The sugar tax already has this complication, the sugar tax only applies to added sugar drinks, not fruit juice for example.
 
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Caporegime
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Is this true? I see my usual protein has gone up but didn't make that connection between the two??

I don't think it's related.

For example, this government already added an extortionate 20% Vat to fruit drinks like smoothies, if we believe the governments logic that the sugar tax reduces the amount of cola people buy, then this vat on smoothies must similarly reduce the amount of fruit people consume thus negatively affecting the populations health.
 
Caporegime
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consuming smoothies != consuming fruit, thus the tax. Fruit juice is really, really high in sugar, with some evidence suggesting that fructose is the kind of sugar that does the most damage.

A lot of the fibre in fruit is lost when making fruit juice, leaving little else but sugar.
 
Caporegime
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consuming smoothies != consuming fruit, thus the tax. Fruit juice is really, really high in sugar, with some evidence suggesting that fructose is the kind of sugar that does the most damage.

A lot of the fibre in fruit is lost when making fruit juice, leaving little else but sugar.

I never mentioned fruit juice. Smoothies = blended fruit, identical chemical composition and vitamin content.
 
Soldato
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Well yeah of course the .gov website says that! Public health is perhaps the no1 excuse used to raise revenue, as if 500mill is seen as nothing by the government, they are up in arms about comparitvely tiny tax evasion lol.

I knew that one was coming, £500 million is pocket change compared to the £769 billion total tax receipts, its not even in the margin or error. To put £500 million in perspective, it would cover just housing benefit spend for less than 8 days.

As for tax evasion, tiny? Not sure you see the same figures as everyone else. The latest tax gap estimates put tax evasion at £5.3 billion and the hidden economy is a further £3.2 billion. The overall tax gap is £33 billion.
 
Caporegime
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I knew that one was coming, £500 million is pocket change compared to the £769 billion total tax receipts, its not even in the margin or error. To put £500 million in perspective, it would cover just housing benefit spend for less than 8 days.

Likewise. So often I see the same old tired arguments about x tax being so small it's "relatively insignificant" compared to total taxation etc, much the same arguments people used to excuse the cleverly disguised VAT raising measure that was the minimum alcohol unit price. If you think that that certain politicians didn't do very well for themselves out of the £500mill estimated revenue that was being raised by this measure and the lobbying groups you're very much mistaken.

As for tax evasion, tiny? Not sure you see the same figures as everyone else. The latest tax gap estimates put tax evasion at £5.3 billion and the hidden economy is a further £3.2 billion. The overall tax gap is £33 billion.

The government's fudged figures aside, according to you the government isn't interested in such small figures as they are a relatively insignificant part of the total tax take.

However the government don't simply make a big deal out of the total estimated evasion, but single individuals who only have liabilities in the region of a few million, hell they zealously peruse those who even commit a few £k in benefit fraud.
 
Caporegime
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Because societal changes see a continuing shift in the attitude towards tobacco, resulting in ever decreasing consumption, it's not cause and effect.



The sugar tax already has this complication, the sugar tax only applies to added sugar drinks, not fruit juice for example.
Is this true? I see my usual protein has gone up but didn't make that connection between the two??


Protien shakes have vat I think he means as theyr e a luxury
 
Associate
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Policy objective
A levy on soft drinks will contribute to the government’s plans to reduce childhood obesity by removing added sugar from soft drinks. The levy encourages producers of added sugar soft drinks to:

  • reformulate their products to reduce the sugar content
  • reduce portion sizes for added sugar drinks and importers to import reformulated drinks with low added sugar to encourage consumers of soft drinks to move to healthier choices
If they do this, producers and importers of added sugar soft drinks can pay less or even escape the charge altogether.

So it has no quantified objective and uses subjective words like contribute, encourage, reduce without qualifiers.

Thus it's a wishy, washy, untestable, open-ended, wide scoped, open to interpretation bit of standard modern politics.

Also, "government plan's" is not defined, except to "contribute to reduce childhood obesity" (noted this is without a deadline).

So the only testable aspect of this, and it requires some assumptions, is if it does contribute to the governments plans to reduce childhood obesity and ... the only possible test for that is the reduction of childhood obesity.

Ergo it can only be said to have worked if it reduces childhood obesity.

For example, what if it turns out that sugar is not the problem? What if it turns out that the campaign against sugar sends children elsewhere to something as bad or worse?
 
Soldato
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For example, what if it turns out that sugar is not the problem? What if it turns out that the campaign against sugar sends children elsewhere to something as bad or worse?

Then you change policy again. You can only go on the knowledge you know at the times, you can't be frozen into inaction forever by saying 'well, we don't know the absolute truth so better do nothing'
 
Caporegime
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And now they are going after banning special offers of sweets and crisps at the checkout.

The end of this will be just like cigarettes with them locked away in cabinets behind a special counter with fat kids on the packets.

******* stupid nanny state.
 
Caporegime
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For example, what if it turns out that sugar is not the problem? What if it turns out that the campaign against sugar sends children elsewhere to something as bad or worse?

Such as?
And it does have the clear stated objective of reducing sugar content which it has done
 
Soldato
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The government actually admit they were wrong about something, when has that ever happened?

Drug prohibition, 100 years later on with millions dead, medical experts begging for legalisation and untold economic disaster and the government still hasn't admitted they were wrong logically or morally...

Drugs prohibition is just another charade. They manage to inflate the price of drugs by thousands of percent above their actual value by using law, because they automatically own all the money tied up in drugs because its proceeds of crime. This whole drugs prohibition thing is just to help retain cash. And so is this sugar tax lol.

People think some random politicians care about some fatty who's gonna fat? Unbelievable.
Fatty will be fat and/or unhealthy even if sugar becomes classified as Class A lol. This is a FACT.

The only reason sugar is in the scope of governments is because it's a necessary food and ALL people need it, not just fatties.
 
Soldato
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And now they are going after banning special offers of sweets and crisps at the checkout.

The end of this will be just like cigarettes with them locked away in cabinets behind a special counter with fat kids on the packets.

******* stupid nanny state.

lol yep. This whole charade is just utterly stupid, I honestly cannot believe even one person would lap this crap up it's just such BS but i guess it goes hand in hand with the dumbing down of the nation and the current propaganda/mind control culture.
 
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