Sales Tax on Soda Tax Passes

With little fanfare DC expanded their general sales tax to include soda.

The tax appears to apply to the same products that the original ill-conceived soda tax would - only those with sugar.

This is a far more reasonable tax. In fact I don't see why it wouldn't be expanded to include any kind of junk food.

The tax rate is the same as that on many other goods that are already taxed in DC. A $0.99 2-liter bottle of coke will get taxed at 6 cents, proportional to its cost, not 67 cents, proportional to it's volume.

I'm not sure why they would just tax sugared sodas, though. This makes implementation difficult. Practically speaking, any business that doesn't operate with a computerized scanner checkout system (e.g., anything other than big supermarkets) will probably just pay the tax on the bottom line for soda they buy from the distributor, and raise prices across the board. It's too complicated for a corner store to expect their employees to figure out at the point-of-sale which drinks must be taxed and which must not.

Likewise, I remain unconvinced that potentially cancer-causing artificial sweeteners are any better for you than sugar. But I have been called crazy before, so that's just me.

At the end of the day, the tax rate is totally reasonable, and hopefully this will put to rest the insanely high per-ounce tax, and the frightening precedents that would have brought.