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

Regarding tax on sugary products I saw this today, mentioned in a comment on Reddit:

Seattle have passed a tax on soda:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...a-hefty-price-seattles-soda-tax-starts-jan-1/

Chicago passed a tax that was then quickly reppealed:

https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2017/10/fizzled-0

It had come into effect on August 2nd, after a delay thanks to a lawsuit by the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, and will cease to exist on December 1st. From the very start the one-cent-per-ounce levy on sweetened soft drinks was massively unpopular: policymakers claimed it was introduced to protect public health but its main purpose was to plug a $1.8bn hole in the budget.
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90% of Cook county residents were opposed to the tax. Some drove to nearby Indiana to stock up on the fizzy stuff. Local radio was abuzz with complaints. Local lawmakers were flooded with calls to get rid of the tax. And it did not raise as much revenue as forecast because some restaurants retailers sold almost 50% fewer fizzy drinks.
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Apparently it lead to a black market in soda (what I assume are people on benefits) wouldn't have to pay the tax, and they could then re-sell the soda to others at cost and get cash!

There was also the case where it was only on pure soda, not bar drinks or even Starbucks coffee which can have huge amounts of added sugar, because it is a combined drink not a pure product with sugar added.

Where I saw it mentioned:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/...have_increased_in_price_to_the_point/dto2yow/
 
antijoke said:
It's hilarious how the government think the answer to everything is slap a tax on it.

Well you know what I am sick of the retards in power being total numbskulls so I would like to propose an MP tax of which 90% of their wages goes to the normal person on the street.
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This gets my vote. Hell, the higher the level if idiocy, the higher the tax.
Boris Johnson tax on his level could solve many a money crisis :p
 
adolf hamster said:
the thing with governments is if there are 2 options to solve a problem: 1 that works and 1 that makes money, they'll always take the second option.

take smoking- they could have banned it outright or raised the age to buy cigarettes by 1 year every year, but instead they chose to go down the tax it to death route.
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Contrary to popular belief, governments do have to make money.

Though, they could spend less of it...
 
jpaul said:
it's the converse - they have made it easier for smugglers to duplicate the packets ? they could have requested holograms or more elaborate tracking mechanisms if they wanted to really stop grey imports (can't immediately see stats on seizures, but, it is not black and white)
quelling the 'glamour' of the advertising message of the packets was their motivation.
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Smugglers never duplicated the packets before and I am doubtful there are many that replicate the grey packets now. Before it was as easy as just getting them into the country and on the shelves. Can't count how many times i have bought smokes from a shop with another language as the warning, though they could have just sourced cigarettes from an English speaking EU country if they wanted to get the packet spot on before the new packets came in. Gibraltar is infamous as a place where people purchase cheap cigarettes to sell in other countries, with packets being sold in English. With the highstreet there costing less than a third of what we charge here and removing the massive amount of tax you woul have to pay, it is not surprising they brought in this law.
 
They do have to make money, but i would feel better about giving them money if they spent it better and were honest about why they were taking it.

I suppose it is easier to implement a tax 'for your health' than it is to implement a tax for a lucrative and over expensive pharmaceutical contract because 'i owe my brother in law director a favour' or something similar.
 
just had my first experience of barrs new recipe irnbru, utterly vile compared to the full sugar version, I don't care if its supposed be healthier and better for me its horrid.

drinking alcohol instead tonight.
 
McVities did a u turn for their recipe so there could be hope for irnbru ?

..Larger than the Seattle/chicago drink taxes the Danes reverted the fat tax too -
Does any country have experience of a sugary drinks tax?
— Denmark introduced a tax on sweetened soft drinks in the 1930s which by 2013 was being levied at a rate of €0.22 a litre and brought in €60m a year.
— However, the Danish government also estimated that it was losing €38.9m in VAT from illegal soft drink sales.
— In 2011, the government also introduced a fat tax, levied at 16 Kroner (£1.78) on food items with more than 2.3% saturated fat, and planned a more general sugar tax.
— However, the fat tax was abandoned after 15 months when surveys suggested only 7% of Danes had reduced their fat intake. The tax was, however, blamed for 1,300 lost jobs as Danish shoppers crossed to Germany or Sweden. The proposed sugar tax was abandoned and the soft drinks tax abolished, too.
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Avenged7Fold said:
Smugglers never duplicated the packets before
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hadn't updated earlier posts but see pictures - that is the optimal fraud where they can be sold in any shop
 
I actually read the consultation document from hmrc on this a while ago. The government were at pains to point out that this is not a consumption tax, but a tax on producers to encourage them to reformulate their drinks. Given the bitching, it seems they were right to take that approach.
 
233 said:
just had my first experience of barrs new recipe irnbru, utterly vile compared to the full sugar version, I don't care if its supposed be healthier and better for me its horrid.

drinking alcohol instead tonight.
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Drink the new stuff for a while and it'll taste fine. You'll soon get used to not drinking bizarre amounts of sugar. I switched from fizzy drinks with handfuls of sugar in them to fizzy drinks with no sugar. They tasted horrid. Within a few weeks, it was the sugar-laden drinks that tasted horrid to me. Now I drink water lightly flavoured with squash.

If you really want to eat handfuls of sugar, just buy a packet of sugar and use a spoon. It's cheaper that way.
 
jpaul said:
McVities did a u turn for their recipe so there could be hope for irnbru ?

..Larger than the Seattle/chicago drink taxes the Danes reverted the fat tax too -



hadn't updated earlier posts but see pictures - that is the optimal fraud where they can be sold in any shop
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Ahh yes because people can so easily walk across a border to find cheaper food... on an island. It'll work here like it theoretically should to a much better degree than any continental nation. Mind you tax individuals in this manner is just poor, clearly the UK learned from it.
 
its just another tax, no matter what the real motivation today, 50 years from now food all be heavily taxed "for our own good"....
 
jpaul said:
hadn't updated earlier posts but see pictures - that is the optimal fraud where they can be sold in any shop
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Seems pointless compared to just smuggling them from cheap places with UK packaging like most smugglers did. Now you have to be able to replicate the pack to sell on the cigarettes, before it was as simple as just getting them here.

Regardless, i definitely dont think the new packaging has made smuggling any easier.
 
Angilion said:
Drink the new stuff for a while and it'll taste fine. You'll soon get used to not drinking bizarre amounts of sugar. I switched from fizzy drinks with handfuls of sugar in them to fizzy drinks with no sugar. They tasted horrid. Within a few weeks, it was the sugar-laden drinks that tasted horrid to me. Now I drink water lightly flavoured with squash.

If you really want to eat handfuls of sugar, just buy a packet of sugar and use a spoon. It's cheaper that way.
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That's just nonsense, I mainly drink Pepsi max, but diet coke variants still taste horrible whilst full fat coke tastes great.
 
Energize said:
That's just nonsense, I mainly drink Pepsi max, but diet coke variants still taste horrible whilst full fat coke tastes great.
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I don't know...there's a certain logic to that post. I definitely feel like full fat varieties of cola's taste far too sweet for me now. Although, rather than missing the sugar making it horrible it might just be the new taste that is horrible so there's no guarantee of liking it.
 
I've been off added-sugar and sugary things since September, and never been a big soda drinker.

Erythritol/Stevia blend is the bomb! Only thing is it is like 14x the price of normal sugar.
 
Diet Coke is the diet version of the 'new coke' they tried to sell years ago with nobody liked. I don't tend to drink fizzy drinks especially 'full fat' ones as I see it as a waste of calories however Pepsi Max is my favourite out them all anyways.
 
I used to like Cherry Coke around 2003-2005 ish, then they went and changed it and it's never tasted the same since.
 
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