Philadelphia's Mayor Nutter's Nutty Sweet Drink Tax

Killing two birds with one stone?  Mayor Nutter has a solution to  the city's "weight and wallet" problems, and has proposed a tax on sugary drinks 32 times the state's tax on beer.  Of course, sugary drinks are empty calories, you don't need a medical degree to figure that out.  So, then, what would be the harm in taxing sugary drinks so that people drink less of them?

First sin taxes rarely produce the revenue they project and this tax illustrates that point.  If the goal is to get people to drink fewer sugary beverages, the projected revenues of $77 million from the tax seem to disprove the theory people will substitute healthier drinks to avoid the tax.  Perhaps some will but most will find ways to avoid the tax altogether.  A short trip to a suburban supermarket or "Sam's Club" seems like an easy solution to paying the tax.  Last I checked, it is still beyond the power of the mayor to impose a sales tax beyond city limits.  Way to drive more business out of the city.

Nutter's tax is also significantly higher than similar taxes proposed in other major urban cities:

Philadelphia is not the first to propose such a tax. New York, Massachusetts, and California are among seven states considering levies on sugar-sweetened drinks. But Nutter's proposal would double New York's and dwarf the 3 percent soft-drink tax in Chicago, the only major city with such a tax.

Chicago's tax, for instance, adds 4 cents to a 20-ounce Coke priced at $1.29. The city taxes soda, diet drinks, sports drinks, sweet tea, and all drinks containing natural or artificial sweeteners.

If Nutter's goal is to raise revenue, a lower tax that is less likely to create tax avoidance and/or reduce consumption, would be more effective.  Philadelphia already has a history of driving business and citizens from the city through outrageous taxes.  This tax would likely send more jobs outside the city as well:

The local campaign against the Philadelphia proposal surfaced yesterday with an alliance between the Pennsylvania Beverage Association and the Teamsters.

"Philadelphians already pay the highest sales tax in the state, and this would increase the cost of the beverages they enjoy by as much as a staggering 100 percent," Tony Crisci, lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Beverage Association, said in a statement timed to coincide with Nutter's release of budget details.

Crisci, in a phone interview, estimated the number of sweet-drinks jobs in the city at 2,000, including 1,000 in the Coke and Pepsi bottling plants in North Philadelphia and Northeast Philadelphia.

Here's a novel idea for Mayor Nutter, how about  lowering taxes in the city in hopes of bringing people, jobs and businesses back to the city. The City of Philadelphia continually adopts policies that are counterintuitive and counterproductive  Worse still, they leave the city's poorest citizens to bear the brunt of years and years of failed Democratic policies, yet the poorest citizens will continually elect more Democratic politicians.  That's not just nutty, it's the very definition of insanity.