MauledAgain

I have been writing about the soda tax for about 14 years, though I haven’t written very much in recent years, perhaps because I have said all that I think needs to be said. My thoughts can be found in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, The Soda Tax “War” and a Pathway to Tax Peace, and The Primary Goal of the Philadelphia Soda Tax: Not a Reduction in Soda Consumption.

But occasionally a story or an email comes along that re-awakens the part of my brain that focuses on the soda tax. Several days ago a reader alerted me to this story, with the eye-catching headline, “Seattle's Soda Tax Goes Horribly Wrong.” The report described a study comparing Seattle, which enacted a soda tax, and Portland, which did not, and determined that in Seattle sales of beer, though not wine, increased as sales of soda decreased. Though beer, and wine, are taxed in Seattle, they are taxed at what amounts to a lower per-ounce rate. The article points out that 16 ounces of regular soda has roughly 140 calories whereas beer has roughly 200 calories for the same amount.

The reader who sent the email wrote, “I believe you predicted this result several years ago.” I replied that I did not think I had addressed this consequence of a soda tax, instead focusing on other issues. Those included the silliness of taxing sugary beverages but not other products containing sugar, of language that brought beverages within the scope of the tax that are healthy rather than unhealthy, shortfalls in predicted revenues, discrepancies between planned and actual uses of the revenue, and litigation over the tax.

But as I sat down to write this post, I searched my blog and discovered that two years ago, in Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, I had described reports and studies showing that the same thing happened in Philadelphia, though as soda consumption decreased, there was an increase not only in the consumption of beer, but also wine and certain liquors. Though I did not predict this result, I did write about it, which means that the part of my brain that focuses on the soda tax did not fully awaken when I read the email.

In my reply I also shared a question that popped into my brain after reading the email. Are children, who also consume significant amounts of soda, also shifting to beer? Hopefully not. And now I add more questions. So is soda consumption among Seattle children not declining? Is it declining and being replaced with some other beverage? If so, is it a beverage that does not appeal to former soda-drinking adults as much as beer? And, I suppose, in the meantime, people of all ages continue to consume donuts, cookies, pies, cakes, and candy, so what is happening to sugar consumption?

The soda tax is one of those topics that probably will never go away. I have been writing about the soda tax since 2008, in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, and The Soda Tax “War” and a Pathway to Tax Peace.

Now comes news from the Philadelphia Inquirer that a recent study by Drexel University researchers indicates that the amount of soda and other sugary drinks consumed by Philadelphia residents declined so little since enactment of the soda tax that the change is statistically insignificant. The decline was essentially the same as in places without a soda tax. Interestingly, a study in Washington state determined that soda sales in Seattle, which has a soda tax, dropped by 30 percent while sales in Portland, Oregon, which does not have a soda tax, dropped by 10 percent. However, not all sources of sugary beverage purchases were taken into account, and though retail establishments outside each city were included in the survey, only those within two miles were considered. The sweetened beverage tax in Cook County, Illinois, which didn’t last very long, reduced sales by 21 percent, according to the study reported in this story, but purchases outside the county limits did not seem to have been taken into account. One conclusion from these results is that consumption of sugary beverages is dropping generally, for a variety of reasons other than taxes, and that soda taxes are contributing, at best, a marginal increase in that decline.

Yet what struck me from the Philadelphia Inquirer story is something said by Lauren Cox, a spokesperson for the administration of Mayor Jim Kenney, the principal supporter of Philadelphia’s soda tax. As I described in Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, Kenney voted against the soda tax when it was proposed by his predecessor, but once he took office he flipped positions. Why? I suggested, “The answer appears to be quite simple. The new mayor has discovered that his spending proposals, such as universal pre-kindergarten, community schools, park and recreation center upgrades, and similar projects, require revenue. Rather than raising any existing taxes, he has turned to a tax on certain sugary drinks.” I added, “If the concern is health, as soda tax advocates claim, and if a significant cause of health problems is sugar, as soda tax advocates claim, and as research tends to demonstrate, then why not a sugar tax? Why not a tax not only on sweetened drinks, but also on cakes, cookies, pies, donuts, sugared coffee, ice cream, and candy?” According to the Philadelphia Inquirer story, Cox “said that reducing consumption was not the city’s primary goal in implementing the tax.” So what was the primary goal? Let me guess. Revenue.

The soda tax has been the subject of MauledAgain commentaries since 2008, though it has been about a year since I last wrote about it. I have written about the soda tax in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, and Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World.

One of the reasons that the soda tax hasn’t been popping up in this blog for the past 12 months is that there has been much less activity and fewer attempts at enacting soda taxes across the nation. One reason, perhaps the principal reason, for this pause is explained in a Philadelphia Inquirer article from a few days ago. According to the article, the prediction that many localities would follow the soda tax legislation enacted in Philadelphia has not come to fruition because the soda industry expanded its fight against the tax from Philadelphia and other local jurisdictions to state legislatures. Despite public health officials predicting that dozens, if not hundreds, of cities and towns would enact soda taxes or some variant of soda taxes, only seven cities have one in place. It has been two years since a city has enacted a soda tax.

What the beverage industry has been doing is to lobby state legislatures to enact legislation prohibiting local governments from enacting soda taxes, and in some instances, other taxes as well. There are a variety of reasons state legislatures are easily persuaded to prohibit local governments from adding new taxes. State legislatures find it convenient to hold taxing power, because it provides leverage with respect to other issues. State legislatures can be cognizant of the “border crossing” issue, as exemplified by the number of Philadelphia residents taking their beverage, and even grocery shopping, across the city’s boundaries into adjacent suburban towns.

Though Philadelphia was not the first city to enact a soda tax – Berkeley, California was – its legislation and experience became a model for subsequent enactments and Philadelphia became the focal point of the dispute between soda tax advocates and the beverage industry. Though six other cities have a soda tax – Seattle, Boulder, Colorado, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and Albany, California – attempts to enact a soda tax in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was voted own, and Cook County repealed the one it had enacted. Seven proposals pending elsewhere have not been enacted.

Philadelphia’s mayor Jim Kenney, the leading advocate of soda taxes in Philadelphia, reacted to the hiatus in soda tax enactments by expressing this thought: “It’s a shame, because that money could be going to really good purposes in many communities.” It’s interesting that his focus was on the revenue, and not on the alleged public health benefits. Throughout my commentaries, I have stressed that the soda tax was motivated more by the quick and simple increase in revenue that it presents rather than a true concern for public health, because a genuine public health motivation would extend the tax to all sugar-containing foods and beverages, and would not reach, as some of these taxes do, beverages that do not contain sugar.

Opponents of Philadelphia’s soda tax want its repeal, though some seem willing to accept a modification. The biggest complaints are the high rate of the tax and the application of the tax to beverages that are far from unhealthy. The solution, of course, is what I have been proposing all along, that is, to expand the tax to include all items containing sugar and to lower the rate. Properly drafted, the revenue would be unaffected but the rate would be reduced to a level sufficiently low that it would not have the negative collateral effects that the current tax generates.

The so-called “war,” as the article describes the political jockeying, will continue, both in Philadelphia and across the nation. It will end only when the two sides find a way to meet in the middle, as I propose. Unfortunately, the likelihood of that happening is low, because at the moment whatever issue is being considered across the nation, the two sides line up in such a way as to make the middle a dangerous, and thus unattractive, place. Until the zealots on both sides find a way to understand the long-term disadvantages of zealous partisanship, not just on taxes or soda taxes or any issue, “war” and its adverse consequences will continue to thwart human progress.

I have been writing about the flaws of the soda tax for more than a decade, beginning with What Sort of Tax?, and continuing with The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, Was the Philadelphia Soda Tax the Product of Revenge?, Did a Revenge Mistake Alter Tax History?, What’s More Effective? Taxing and Restricting Soda or Educating People About Healthy Lifestyles?, If Sugar Is Bad And Is Going To Be Taxed, Tax Everything That Contains Sugar, Time for a Salt Tax to Replace a Soda Tax?, and So the Soda Tax Really Was About the Revenue and Not So Much About Health. One of my criticisms is that the soda tax misses the mark if the goal of its supporters is truly to reduce sugar intake, because not only does the soda tax apply to some liquids that are not unhealthy, it also fails to reach most items that contain sugar. As I wrote in So the Soda Tax Really Was About the Revenue and Not So Much About Health:

One of my several criticisms of the soda tax is that it singles out certain liquids that contain sugar, and ignores other sugary substances. . . .

Another, related, concern that I have about the soda tax is that it is premised on the claim that it is designed to improve people’s health, yet it is not applied to any food or beverage that is unhealthy other than sugar. So is sugar the prime cause of bad health? According to a recent study, reported in this article, the answer is no. I wrote about that flaw of the soda tax in Time for a Salt Tax to Replace a Soda Tax?

Another concern, to which I’ve not given much attention, is the inequity of taxing sweetened beverages based on the number of ounces in the beverage rather than the amount of sugar. If the primary goal of the soda tax is to reduce sugar consumption, then even aside from the failure to tax solid forms of sugar, the tax should reflect the amount of sugar in the drink. Some sugary beverages contain twice or three times the sugar in a given number of ounces than do other sugary beverages.

All of these concerns, along with the silliness of taxing some items that are healthy despite having some sugar content, have contributed to my conclusion that the soda tax is designed for revenue production rather than health benefits. Taxing beverages is much easier than taxing all sugar-containing substances based on the number of grams of sugar in a particular substance. In a number of my commentaries on the soda tax I have suggested that it was designed as a revenue raiser. And now we have the proof.

According to this Philadelphia Inquirer story, “Mike Dunn, a spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney, said the health benefits of Philadelphia’s tax ‘have always been secondary to the primary goal’ of funding important city programs.” Wow. For quite some time, Kenney and other advocates of the soda tax have claimed that they proposed the tax in order to improve the health of people living in Philadelphia. As I, and others, have repeatedly emphasized, if reducing sugar consumption was the primary motivation for the tax, it would have been, should have been, and could have been, applied to all foodstuffs and beverages containing sugar. That approach, of course, would permit reduction of the tax to a level that would not have the adverse financial impact on businesses and consumers that the existing soda tax has caused.

And now comes news of a a study that suggests a better way to combat obesity and its attendant health problems: put a tax on “high sugar snacks” rather than simply on sugar-sweetened drinks. The study was conducted in the United Kingdom but surely the results would be the same if conducted in the United States. The researchers discovered that “high sugar snacks . . . make up more free sugar . . . intake than sugary drinks.” So I was on the right track with my suggestion that the “soda tax” should have been, and should be, a “sugar tax.” There’s a difference. As the researchers concluded, “Reducing purchases of high sugar snacks therefore has the potential to make a greater impact on population health than reducing the purchase of sugary drinks.”

The researchers determined that a tax on “high sugar snacks” would reduce a person’s weight by an average of 1.3 kilograms (almost 3 pounds) over a year. In contrast, the soda tax reduces a person’s weight by an average of just 203 grams over one year (less than half a pound). That’s a six-fold difference.

The researchers suggest that taxing “high sugar snacks” is something "worthy of further research and consideration as part of an integrated approach to tackling obesity." They point to the fact that their study lasted only one year, though they are confident that running a similar study over a longer period of time would not generate different outcomes.

What is particularly annoying about the soda tax is that its advocate fail to address the questions I, and others, have raised about its scope and effectiveness with respect to obesity. Now that a study confirms that obesity involves more than sugar-sweetened beverages, perhaps the advocates of soda taxes can refine their thinking and legislators at every level can go back to the drawing board.

The debate about the soda tax shows no sign of easing up. I have commented many times on the soda tax, including posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, Was the Philadelphia Soda Tax the Product of Revenge?, Did a Revenge Mistake Alter Tax History?, and What’s More Effective? Taxing and Restricting Soda or Educating People About Healthy Lifestyles?.

A few days ago, as reported in this Philadelphia Inquirer article, among others, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement in which it identified “sugar consumption among children and adolescents as a “grave health threat.” My guess is that no mention was made of sugar consumption by adults because adults are not the focus of pediatricians. The Academy also encouraged legislatures to “consider taxes on sugary drinks as a way to reduce consumption.” It praised the Philadelphia soda tax not only because it taxes beverages but also because of the use to which the revenue is put. Yet the statement noted that, “If the tax revenue is allocated to decrease health disparities or provide other services that promote health in these specific groups, the tax ultimately may be progressive.”

There are three aspects of the Academy’s statement that are troublesome. In all fairness, the Academy is not alone in taking illogical positions with respect to the soda tax debate.

If the concern is sugar consumption, then the tax should be on sugar consumption and not just on some items that contain sugar. Though it is true that soda consumption accounts for a substantial source of sugar, the sugar in pies, cookies, cakes, ice cream, candy, and a long list of other foodstuffs is just as dangerous as is the sugar in soda. Worse, as has been pointed out time and again, the Philadelphia sugar tax applies to items that are not a health threat and even essential to good health. Logically, a tax on sugar is different from, and needs to extend beyond, soda.

Using soda tax or sugar tax revenue to educate people about good nutrition and to “decrease health disparities” makes sense. It is consistent with treating a soda tax or sugar tax as a type of user fee. Using soda tax revenue to fund programs that are not connected to these goals is just another example of finding revenue by focusing on the easiest items to tax.

If the concern is about the health of children, to say nothing of people generally, then the focus on sugar distracts from, and even implies acceptance of, the consumption of other items that are unhealthy. Substituting water or vegetable juice for soda in a meal filled with fried foods, red meat, pesticide-infested foods, and all sorts of non-beverage desserts might reduce some health problems in some people, but doesn’t make much of a dent in the obesity and other health epidemics afflicting the nation. There are many people who suffer serious health problems but who don’t, and for years and decades haven’t, consumed soda and other sugary beverages. Fixing nutrition issues requires more than slapping a tax on certain beverages. If the tax were applied more broadly, to all foods and beverages that contribute to health problems, the impact on any particular item would be much lower and less likely to generate opposition.

One of my several criticisms of the soda tax is that it singles out certain liquids that contain sugar, and ignores other sugary substances. I have been writing about the flaws of the soda tax for more than a decade, beginning with What Sort of Tax?, and continuing with The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, Was the Philadelphia Soda Tax the Product of Revenge?, Did a Revenge Mistake Alter Tax History?, What’s More Effective? Taxing and Restricting Soda or Educating People About Healthy Lifestyles?, If Sugar Is Bad And Is Going To Be Taxed, Tax Everything That Contains Sugar, and Time for a Salt Tax to Replace a Soda Tax?

Another, related, concern that I have about the soda tax is that it is premised on the claim that it is designed to improve people’s health, yet it is not applied to any food or beverage that is unhealthy other than sugar. So is sugar the prime cause of bad health? According to a recent study, reported in this article, the answer is no. I wrote about that flaw of the soda tax in Time for a Salt Tax to Replace a Soda Tax?

Another concern, to which I’ve not given much attention, is the inequity of taxing sweetened beverages based on the number of ounces in the beverage rather than the amount of sugar. If the primary goal of the soda tax is to reduce sugar consumption, then even aside from the failure to tax solid forms of sugar, the tax should reflect the amount of sugar in the drink. Some sugary beverages contain twice or three times the sugar in a given number of ounces than do other sugary beverages.

All of these concerns, along with the silliness of taxing some items that are healthy despite having some sugar content, have contributed to my conclusion that the soda tax is designed for revenue production rather than health benefits. Taxing beverages is much easier than taxing all sugar-containing substances based on the number of grams of sugar in a particular substance. In a number of my commentaries on the soda tax I have suggested that it was designed as a revenue raiser. And now we have the proof.

According to this Philadelphia Inquirer story, “Mike Dunn, a spokesperson for Mayor Jim Kenney, said the health benefits of Philadelphia’s tax ‘have always been secondary to the primary goal’ of funding important city programs.” Wow. For quite some time, Kenney and other advocates of the soda tax have claimed that they proposed the tax in order to improve the health of people living in Philadelphia. As I, and others, have repeatedly emphasized, if reducing sugar consumption was the primary motivation for the tax, it would have been, should have been, and could have been, applied to all foodstuffs and beverages containing sugar. That approach, of course, would permit reduction of the tax to a level that would not have the adverse financial impact on businesses and consumers that the existing soda tax has caused.

The soda tax has been getting my attention for eleven years, and though there was a respite, it now is once again getting plenty of attention in national commentaries. I have written about the soda tax since 2008, in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, and Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax.

As readers of this blog know, although its advocates continue to praise its existence, the soda tax fails to get my support because it is both too narrow and too broad. It applies to items that ought not be subjected to this sort of “health improvement” tax, and yet fails to apply to most of the food and beverage items that contribute to health problems. Very little of its revenues are directed into health improvement efforts.

An email from a reader has alerted me to another flaw in Philadelphia’s soda tax. The reader pointed me to this commentary, in which Kyle Smith notes, “Now that beer is, in some cases, cheaper than soda in Philadelphia, alcohol sales are up sharply.” Somehow, I had not been aware of this development. A bit of research confirmed it, as it was reported in this article from about a year ago, though the increase was not limited to beer but also affected wine and some types of liquor but not other types of liquor. The article also suggested that the changes in alcohol consumption could not necessarily attributed to the soda tax. About a week ago, in this article, Heather Moon concludes that because beer is cheaper than soda, there is a “correlated increase in alcohol sales in [Philadelphia] as a result.”

It is not surprising that people who encounter price increases when purchasing one beverage would turn to another beverage that is less expensive. Those who are seeking soda because they want something cold to drink on a summer day might consider beer to be a suitable substitute. The same can be said for those who are seeking soda because it is something they enjoy if beer is another beverage that they enjoy.

Though there are arguments about the health consequences of drinking beer or other alcohol, there is no doubt that drinking alcohol to excess is at least as unhealthy as drinking soda to excess. In some respects, though overconsumption of soda harms the drinker, overconsumption of alcohol harms not only the drinker but potentially harms others. What this means is simple, namely, that the soda tax does not correlate well with health improvement, even though that is its purpose according to its advocates. Attempts to regulate health through taxation would require very detailed fine-tuning, because very few items are dangerous to health in all events, whereas most items are dangerous to health if too little or too much is consumed. What is too little or too much depends on each individual. Designing a tax to control dietary input requires a scheme so complicated it might make the federal income tax look simple.

The key is education. There are too many people who do not understand the risks of consuming too little or too much of most foods and beverages. Perhaps the advocates of “health improving” soda taxes will next offer a tax on failure to eat vegetables?

It’s soda tax time again! This is an issue on which I have commented many times, including posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, Was the Philadelphia Soda Tax the Product of Revenge?, and Did a Revenge Mistake Alter Tax History?

Recently, reader Morris asked me, “What is your opinion on the 5 new bills in California to reduce soda intake?” He pointed me to an article describing those five proposals. One, of course, involved taxes, and it simply is a replication of the “sugary beverage” taxes enacted in Philadelphia and some other localities that pose more problems than they provide solutions. The other four proposals also pose more problems than solutions. Those four other proposals are to reduce unsealed soda container sizes, print warning labels on sugary beverages, remove sugary beverages from checkout lanes, and stop soda companies from offering promotions to retailers.

Rationales for these ideas, though appearing to be sensible, distract attention from a wider problem. The problem is the inability or unwillingness of many Americans to eat and drink and live in a healthy manner. Though sugary beverages presumably are the primary source of sugar consumption, and though excessive sugar consumption can trigger a variety of health problems, focusing on sugar while ignoring all the other unhealthy foods and beverages, to say nothing of unhealthy lifestyles, is not unlike enacting restrictions on drone use by people of a certain age while ignoring misuse of drones by those in other age groups simply because there is somewhat more abuse of drones by people in that certain age group.

When a problem exists, focusing on one cause while ignoring all others is foolish and ineffective. If a house is insufficiently insulated, does it make sense to put in energy-efficient windows while ignoring the lack of attic insulation? If the nation is to become healthier, it will take much more than restrictions on the consumption of sugary beverages. Advocates will claim that restrictions on soda are “a start,” but that’s like locking one door while leaving the others open. As I’ve asked in the past, where are the restrictions on food and beverages that are no less damaging in the long run that soda consumption? What about the excess consumption of donuts, pies, and cakes? Or fast food? Or food tainted with pesticides or that are genetically modified? Perhaps in light of the adverse health effects of red meat and fatty foods, when will there be a focus on sales of bacon?

The flaw in focusing on a “soda tax” is demonstrated by the reach of the Philadelphia soda tax. It doesn’t reach a variety of foods containing high amounts of sugar. Yet it applies to beverages that contain relatively small amounts of sugar and that are in other respects much healthier than cakes and pies. There are plenty of people who drink soda but who are in great shape, and there are too many people who don’t drink soda but who suffer from serious health problems caused by the ingestion of foods and beverages that the soda tax advocates ignore.

So what do I think makes more sense? Being a fan of education, I certainly support putting warnings on dangerous things, including dangerous foods and beverages, though realistically I realize that warnings don’t deter everyone. But health education needs to be more than warning labels. It needs to be emphasized in the K-12 schools. It needs to be powerful. When supporters of warning labels attribute the decrease in tobacco smoking to those labels, they overlook two things. That decrease has been accompanied by an increase in vaping, despite warnings. And what I think worked are those television public service announcements showing the impact of smoking on individuals, who describe life using an electrolarynx or dealing with a throat stoma. Surely similar public service announcements can be crafted to show the dangers not only of excessive intake of soda but of ingesting unhealthy foods, failing to exercise, and omitting healthy life routines. Forcing people to live healthily doesn’t work, has never worked, and will not work. Encouraging people, through education in schools, intense public service announcements, and warning labels, can work, if it is honest and sensible.

Last week, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office issued an indictment of eight individuals, as described in this report, among others, I didn’t dig into the details. But then another report appeared that caught my eye. I saw the phrase “soda tax.” What’s THAT about?

As readers of this blog know, the soda tax has been the subject of posts since 2008. I have written about its flaws in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, and Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World. Thus my interest in this bit of news.

It turns out that two of the indicted individuals, electricians union business manager John Dougherty and City Councilman Bobby Henon, who were significant advocates for the Philadelphia soda tax, allegedly pushed for enactment of the tax in an effort to punish the Teamsters union. Dougherty allegedly was angry with the Teamsters union for a television ad it had run that put Dougherty “in a negative light.” The indictment claims that Dougherty told another union official, “Let me tell you what Bobby Henon’s going to do, and he’s already talked to [elected local public official]. They’re going to start to put a tax on soda again, and that will cost the Teamsters 100 jobs in Philly.” It also claims that when a member of the mayor’s administration started to explain why the soda tax would be good for the city, Dougherty replied, “You don’t have to explain to me. I don’t give a f—. Listen, my goal is to make sure you are alright, that’s all.” Allegedly, Dougherty and Henon stayed in touch during the time the soda tax proposal went through the legislative process. Some commentators consider the allegation as fuel for increased opposition to the soda tax from the beverage industry. It seems that the Teamsters union would also be aggravated by the disclosure, considering it has opposed the tax from the outset. Worse, the indictment alleges that Henon, a member of City Council, pushed for the tax as “part of a corrupt bargain he struck with Dougherty in exchange for a $73,131 salary from Local 98 and tickets to sporting events worth $11,807.”

The mayor of Philadelphia, Jim Kenney, explained, “It may have been a revenge plot by Local 98, but it wasn’t to do with me.” He claimed that his finance director suggested a soda tax shortly after he was sworn in as mayor. The soda tax had been proposed and rejected during the term of his mayoral predecessor. Kenney and Dougherty have known each other since childhood, went to school together, and have been active in Democratic politics in the city for a long time. Henon, in the meantime, denied any wrongdoing.

Several days later, two members of the Kenney administration issued a reply. Essentially, they repeat the mayor’s claim that the idea for the soda tax originated with the finance director and that Dougherty had nothing to do with it. They explain that the discussion started with a recognition of the city’s need for revenue to fund pre-K, rehabilitation of parks, recreation centers, and libraries, and other projects. They claim that they had no knowledge of Dougherty’s alleged effort to harm the Teamsters union until the indictment was released. They claim that “the tax was the result of creative thinking around improving education for our children and economic development in our neighborhoods.” After not finding money in the budget because they didn’t want to make more spending cuts in other programs, they considered new revenue sources. They claim that they “reviewed multiple options to raise new revenues,” but they do not identify those options, Instead they “decided to pursue the beverage tax because it provided the necessary revenues, it would not negatively impact other revenue sources needed to fund the School District of Philadelphia or other city services, and the reduced consumption of sweetened beverages has other health benefits that benefit Philadelphia.” A tax on donuts, candy, pies, cakes, fried foods, or other unhealthy food items would also raise revenue and have health benefits. Would such taxes harm the Teamsters union? I don’t know. Were such taxes among the “multiple options”? I don’t know. It seems to me that more information about the origin of the soda tax would be helpful and arguably necessary. Of course, these city officials point out the benefits generated by the revenue raised by the soda tax, but the same benefits arguably would be generated by a lower tax on a wider array of unhealthy foods and beverages.

It remains to be seen what actually transpired behind the scenes. My guess is that a multitude of factors were at play, and not all of them were as noble as the soda tax advocates would want us to believe.

It was more than seven years ago when I first wrote about the soda tax, in What Sort of Tax?. Since then I have revisited the issue at least eleven times, in The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, and Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?. The soda tax is on my “top ten most visited topics” list because it has more lives than the proverbial cat.

Philadelphia’s previous mayor proposed a soda tax several times. It failed each time. Among those in City Council voting against the soda tax was the city’s current mayor. Now, according to this story, the city’s current mayor is proposing a soda tax. What would account for the turn-around? The answer appears to be quite simple. The new mayor has discovered that his spending proposals, such as universal pre-kindergarten, community schools, park and recreation center upgrades, and similar projects, require revenue. Rather than raising any existing taxes, he has turned to a tax on certain sugary drinks.

If the concern is health, as soda tax advocates claim, and if a significant cause of health problems is sugar, as soda tax advocates claim, and as research tends to demonstrate, then why not a sugar tax? Why not a tax not only on sweetened drinks, but also on cakes, cookies, pies, donuts, sugared coffee, ice cream, and candy? When soda tax advocates single out certain beverages and label them as “empty calories,” they make two mistakes. One is that something like sweetened ice tea contains more than just emptiness, as tea has been shown to provide health benefits. The other is that some of the sugary items they exempt from the tax are just as lacking in nutrients. Donuts, for example, which are fried and loaded with fat, are no more healthy, and in some ways even less healthy, than soda. For those who are curious, I have not consumed soda for more than two decades and over the past thirty years I may have eaten two donuts and I’m not even sure of that. Nor do I drink iced tea. So a soda tax, as proposed, has no impact on my personal nutrition or wallet.

Research has demonstrated that about 10 percent of deaths related to obesity and diabetes under age 45 can be attributed to consumption of sugary beverages. Surely consumption of cake, pies, donuts, cookies, candy, and carbohydrates generally have something to do with diabetes and obesity at any age. So when the soda tax advocates point to the “10 percent of deaths” study, they overlook the other 90 percent, particularly the portion caused by other items. Why the reluctance to tax sugar generally?

Research into the effects of Mexico’s soda tax indicates that soda consumption dropped when the tax was enacted. That’s not a surprise. But two questions remain. First, did people simply substitute other sugary items, including fruit drinks, which have been exempted from almost all, if not all, soda tax proposals. Second, did the reduction in soda consumption generate any health benefits? As pointed out in Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, it will take years to determine the answer to that question. If people are substituting another sugary item for soda, the best guess is that there would be little, if any, health improvement.

From a tactical perspective, if Philadelphia enacts a soda tax, it will not have the revenue or health effects that are predicted. Philadelphians will simply make their purchases outside of the city, just as thousands of Pennsylvanians avoid the sales tax by driving to Delaware. That journey, by the way, is for most Pennsylvanians a longer trip than the ones Philadelphians would need to make to purchase sweetened beverages outside of the city. Several individuals interviewed by the writer of the news story promised that they would be making these out-of-the-city shopping expeditions. Because the tax would not apply to drinks to which consumers add sugar, such as hot tea and coffee, perhaps the manufacturers of sugary drinks will being selling them without the sugar so that consumers can add sugar as they do to hot coffee and tea. What we have here is a proposal that has not been thought through to its logical conclusion.

Would it not be easier to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a soda tax if the mayor simply stated, “Look, I opposed the soda tax when the previous mayor, a member of the same political party to which I belong, tried to persuade City Council to enact one. Now that I am mayor, and have plans to spend more money, I need revenue, so that’s why I’ve changed my position on the soda tax.” The fact that the tax would be spent for a variety of programs, and would not be limited to health improvement efforts, makes the “we’re doing this to improve health” argument much easier to dismiss as pretext.

If health was the driving force, why not a tax on French fries, red meat, deep fried cheese sticks, churros, popcorn shrimp, and junk food? But health apparently is not the driving force this time around.

Though it had been a while since I last wrote about the Philadelphia soda tax, no sooner had I published my latest commentary in Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, addressing the closing of a grocery store, than there appeared a Philadelphia Inquirer commentary arguing that the closure was not on account of the soda tax. As readers of this blog know, although its advocates continue to praise its existence, the soda tax fails to get my support because it is both too narrow and too broad. It applies to items that ought not be subjected to this sort of “health improvement” tax, and yet fails to apply to most of the food and beverage items that contribute to health problems. Very little of its revenues are directed into health improvement efforts. Though I haven’t paid much attention to the tax during the past year or so until last week, I had written about the soda tax since 2008, in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, and Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax.

In that recent Philadelphia Inquirer commentary, Ptah Gabrie argues that the closure of the Shoprite was due to other factors. After pointing out that the owner of the grocery store purchased a mansion four years ago and owns other stores that turn a profit, Gabrie cites a study claiming that some Philadelphians were shifting from sugary beverages to bottled water. Aside from the fact that the financial condition of the store’s owner has nothing to do with the fact that the store’s revenues are insufficient to cover the cost of purchasing the items it sells and paying for utilities, insurance, workers’ salaries, and other costs, the decrease in soda consumption has not necessarily translated into reductions in residents’ weight or an increase in residents’ health. Perhaps the sweetness lacking in bottled water is being offset by consumption of more cake, pies, cookies, and doughnuts.

Gabrie claims that the store closed because it lacks a liquor license. Yet even if having a liquor license would have permitted the store to remain open, does not the sale of alcoholic beverages contribute to health problems?

Gabrie also claims that home delivery cut into the revenue of the store in question, and points out that the store did not offer home delivery. Is there any evidence that the number of shoppers at the store decreased because they were using home delivery from other sources, rather than on account of shopping across the city boundary?

Gabrie suggests that a new ShopRite roughly two miles away might be the reason that revenue declined at the closed store. Yet again there is a question of whether shoppers chose to go to that store rather than to a store across the city boundary. It is interesting to speculate, but empirical evidence would be much stronger.

Gabrie asks why, if the soda tax is causing shoppers at stores near the city boundary to shift their shopping to stores outside the city, has the Aldi store not closed. There are several possibilities. One is that the store also is not doing well but its owner is hanging on, hoping for a turnaround. Another is that many of the clientele of that store are not habitual soda drinkers and thus do not see the point in taking their shopping out of the city.

Gabrie writes, “New taxes will always be opposed by the corporations that stand to lose profits and by people who mindlessly oppose any progressive means of changing the way we live.” My opposition is not based on lost profits but on the disconnect between the soda tax and the articulated goal of making people healthier. As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, the soda tax reaches items that are healthy, and fails to reach most items that are not healthy. Gabrie adds, “Taxation is the only way to push people on the fence to the healthy side. Just look at the tobacco industry.” That’s too much of an overstatement. There are, for example, workplace incentives in the form of bonus payments and gym reimbursements that are positive reinforcements of healthy behavior.

Gabrie then claims, “It is a fact that soda and sugary beverages cause diabetes.” It was when I read this statement that I decided I really did need to respond. The fact is, as explained by a variety of sources, including the University of Rochester Medical Center, eating too much sugar does not cause diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, “Type 1 diabetes is caused by genetics and unknown factors that trigger the onset of the disease. Type 2 diabetes is not caused by sugar, but by genetics and lifestyle factors.” The Mayo Clinic adds that gestational diabetes is caused by the placenta producing hormones that make cells more resistant to insulin. According to these and other sources, it’s not the sugar that causes diabetes but the weight that the sugar can add to a person’s body mass, so it’s not just sugar and certainly not just soda that adds the weight. That brings us back to the inconsistency between a tax on selected healthy and unhealthy beverages but the lack of a tax on unhealthy food items that can be just as much a risk for adding diabetes-inducing body weight. How many of the advocates of the soda tax would support a bacon tax, a fried food tax, or a saturated fat tax?

The Philadelphia soda tax saga, like some other topics I have addressed over the years, is a tale that does not seem to have an end. I have written about the tax in posts such as What Sort of Tax?, The Return of the Soda Tax Proposal, Tax As a Hate Crime?, Yes for The Proposed User Fee, No for the Proposed Tax, Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Shelved, But Will It Return?, Taxing Symptoms Rather Than Problems, It’s Back! The Philadelphia Soda Tax Proposal Returns, The Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts of Taxation, The Realities of the Soda Tax Policy Debate, Soda Sales Shifting?, Taxes, Consumption, Soda, and Obesity, Is the Soda Tax a Revenue Grab or a Worthwhile Health Benefit?, Philadelphia’s Latest Soda Tax Proposal: Health or Revenue?, What Gets Taxed If the Goal Is Health Improvement?, The Russian Sugar and Fat Tax Proposal: Smarter, More Sensible, or Just a Need for More Revenue, Soda Tax Debate Bubbles Up, Can Mischaracterizing an Undesired Tax Backfire?, The Soda Tax Flaw in Automotive Terms, Taxing the Container Instead of the Sugary Beverage: Looking for Revenue in All the Wrong Places, Bait-and-Switch “Sugary Beverage Tax” Tactics, How Unsweet a Tax, When Tax Is Bizarre: Milk Becomes Soda, Gambling With Tax Revenue, Updating Two Tax Cases, When Tax Revenues Are Better Than Expected But Less Than Required, The Imperfections of the Philadelphia Soda Tax, When Tax Revenues Continue to Be Less Than Required, How Much of a Victory for Philadelphia is Its Soda Tax Win in Commonwealth Court?, Is the Soda Tax and Ice Tax?, Putting Funding Burdens on Those Who Pay the Soda Tax, Imagine a Soda Tax Turned into a Health Tax, Another Weak Defense of the Soda Tax, Unintended Consequences in the Soda Tax World, and Was the Philadelphia Soda Tax the Product of Revenge?.

The last post in that series examined the claims that union leader John Dougherty and City Council member Bobby Henon pushed for the soda tax in an effort to punish the Teamsters Union. Dougherty allegedly was angry with the Teamsters union for a television ad it had run that put Dougherty “in a negative light.” The ad suggested that Dougherty and Jim Kenney, running at that time for the mayor’s office, which he won, “supported police brutality.” Now, according to this Philadelphia Inquirer report, it turns out that the Teamsters did not arrange or pay for the attack ad. It was the Carpenters union that sponsored the ad, funded by an outfit called Leadership Matters, Inc., which “registered in Pennsylvania a week before the ad aired, just before the May 2015 primary.”

Why would Dougherty make a mistake in identifying who was behind the ad? Both the Teamsters union and the Carpenters union were supporting a different candidate in the mayoral primary, opposing Jim Kenney who was supported by Dougherty. It is understandable that someone would be confused about who is behind a political campaign ad, because national and state election laws, and judicial opinions, have created an environment in which the actual force behind the ad can hide behind a screen of multiply-layered organizations that pop up just before and disappear just after and ad or series of ads. On the other hand, without solid evidence of who is behind an attack ad, reacting to the ad needs to be delayed until that evidence can be ascertained. And, even if the actual identity is known, taking revenge by pushing for a tax that harms individuals not connected with the attack ad controversy isn’t a good long-term strategy. That the tax generates revenue that is put to good use does not in and of itself justify the tax nor the process, or particular elements of the process, that leads to its enactment.

Now, with the soda tax continuing to be the focus of intense political debate, the upcoming election season in Philadelphia is certain to be even more heated than elections in Philadelphia usually are. For those not familiar with Philadelphia politics, election season is always very heated. Though sometimes tax issues get a good bit of attention during a Philadelphia campaign, this time a tax issue might be taking center stage. Charges and denials about the origin of the soda tax are going to be flying in every direction. So guessing an answer to whether this is my last commentary on the Philadelphia soda tax should be easy, barring something taking me out of the blogging circuit.