Posted on 06/28/2016 12:16:32 PM PDT by Kaslin
In Philadelphia, a 1.5-cents-per-ounce tax on beverages goes into effect January 1, 2017. The regressive, highly unpopular tax will add 18 cents to the cost of a can of soda, $1.08 for a six-pack or $1.02 for a two-liter bottle. The new “soda tax” will be added on top of the already excessive 8% sales tax that applies to beverages in Pennsylvania.
Yes, the tax is unpopular – 58% of residents oppose the measure. Yes, the tax will disproportionately harm poor residents – economic studies show that low-income Americans spend a larger portion of their income on consumer goods like soda. No, the tax revenue—as the mayor promised—is not being reserved exclusively for an expanded pre-K program or city parks and recreational facilities. More than half the tax revenue will be used to plug the city’s deteriorating finances. No, the tax is not legal – experts are calling the tax unconstitutional.
Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) might have persuaded the City Council to support a “soda tax” with back-room deals and eleventh-hour concessions to individual council members. However, such sweet-deals and political horse-trading will be out-of-bounds in the judicial system. What will matter in the end is if the mayor’s legal team can persuade the courts that the grocery tax is legal under Pennsylvania law.
Ronald Castille, former Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania high court, has acknowledged that the “soda tax” is a de facto sales tax and preempted by the state. He wrote in Philly.com that the grocery tax is clearly a sales tax.
Many legal experts, including the former Chief Justice, have affirmed that the Philly tax violates Pennsylvania’s state Constitution. Specifically, Article VIII, Section 1 — or the Uniformity clause — which holds:
“All taxes shall be uniform, upon the same class of subjects, within the territorial limits of the authority levying the tax, and shall be collected under general laws.”
Even before the City Council gave final approval to the grocery tax, Justice Castille, wrote in Philly.com that theMayor and Council were pushing an unconstitutional soda tax.
The tax is not only illegal, but it is also an economic disaster in the making.
The Kenney administration's finance director, Rob Dubow, has admitted the city expects stores to close because of lost revenue, and smaller grocery shops, convenience stores, and street vendors will be hit the hardest. The businesses that provide services in low-income communities, hire local residents, and pay a significant amount in taxes. These businesses will fail under the burden of Philly’s regressive, unpopular “soda tax”. When they go out of business, more Philadelphians will be without jobs, neighborhoods without stores, and a city government without a tax base.
It’s happened in other cities, like Baltimore, Maryland.
Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, writes in Philly.com:
“Consider what happened in Baltimore, which enacted a bottle tax in 2010 (with the excuse, in part, of funding school repairs). Critics, including the National Federation of Independent Business and American Beverage Association, predicted that commerce in the city would be harmed, and that's exactly what happened. Painfully, the landmark 83-year-old Santoni's Supermarket in Highlandtown was among the losses. Owner Rob Santoni said the tax had caused an ‘irreversible’ decline in business as customers fled for suburban stores; beverage sales had slumped 28 percent and customer traffic 20 percent. Eighty workers would lose their jobs. ‘What has taken 83 years to build has been torn down by one person [the mayor] and one bad law,’ he told the Baltimore Sun.
More recently, Walmart closed its only Baltimore location, and local grocery chain Mars announced that it would close all its Baltimore stores.
Can you guess what's happened now? Right: Baltimore this winter offered huge one-off tax breaks to supermarkets willing to locate in the city to help solve what was said to be the public health crisis of ‘food deserts.’”
Philadelphia’s Mayor Kenney and the City Council are determined to see the tax implemented this January, and the Kenney administration will defend the “soda tax” in court. If the mayor wins, the city loses. Philadelphia will be burdened with a grocery tax that hurts the poor, causes businesses to close, and sends jobs fleeing. Philly will have its own, self-inflicted “health crisis of food deserts.” And for what? Not an expanded, universal pre-Kindergarten program, like the mayor promised, but to cover the gaping holes in the city’s ramshackle, bloated budget.
Philadelphia is a great city, and its people deserve better from Mayor Kenney and the City Council. “Let brotherly love endure” and let justice be served in the courts
anyone check the HOTEL tax lately?
Uniform my ass!
Why?
Gummint has NO business in the medical BUSINESS!
Such as???
I work in Chester and Delaware County. No Philly Co. for me either.
I didn’t realize you were including the cost of the car and getting it to inspection passing state in that figure.
” including the cost of the car and getting it to inspection passing state in that figure.”
Yeah, and this is key. There is a topic for another day, perhaps another thread. There is a national (And obviously global) push to get people out of their cars and into public transportation.
Well if you get a chance, look up (facebook / youtube) Shawn Ruest out of Connecticut. He’s been fighting an Agenda 21 / Public Transportation push that’s been leaving a path of destruction. All these bus lines do is get poor people from poor neighborhoods to tattoo shops and tanning parlors.
While I’m not a tinfoil hat wearer, I can say that there is a concerted effort to keep poor people locked into a pattern of poverty. To keep them segregated from the daily paths of the wealthy or elite.
Living near Greenwich CT shows this. One of the wealthiest towns in the world, and they make sure to keep the hired help located in a specific section of town and carefully plan out bus routes and times to make sure Consuela can get to the mansion at 8am to get the house ready, and Consuela’s son can’t get to the starbucks or office park.
CT has at least a messed up (FUBAR) DMV system where you can register and drive a shopping cart that shoots flames and has a rack on the front to hold dead hookers - And you can even drive it unregistered (Well.. you have to pay a fine but you won’t get towed or impounded unless you have no insurance)
If you insure something in CT and nothing else - you can get to work. But in PA the car must be perfect, the fees must be paid and if you’ve been unemployed and lost your car, it’s broken or you simply let the reg slip you’re screwed. Your first paycheck better be $4000.
LePage suggests the people shouldn’t be able to use FOOD STAMPS to buy pop, that isn’t remotely the same thing as this tax. I don’t see why you equate them.
Well Philly, you shouldn’t have elected these commies then.
Do you need directions to DU? Take a left.
A consumption tax - ideally should be linked to lower income taxes
well, this gives you the freedom to make a bad choice, it just taxes the choices more.
Isn't this a good thing?
Welcome to Indianapolis!
I won't be riding the bus; but I will be subsidizing it!
And you will; too. Indy got 'federal grants' IE tax monies from across the nation.
Not me... I’m long gone from that place.
It WAS a nice place to live, though... once...
Update, Mayor S-Face talks up his tax at the rat convo.
http://townhall.com/watchdog/wisconsin/2016/07/27/soda-tax-jim-kenney-convention-n9686
BAD POLITICS!!
hard to see how they gonna get much revenue on this tax.
monthly trip to the suburb to buy all your 2-liter sodas.
Haha! They elected Mayor Kenny, whose nickname is “The Toilet Czar”, so they can suck on it.
I have no sympathy. I moved out of that place a long time ago, and won’t ever move back.
Ever since Rizzo went away, it went to crap.
Stores just over the city line are cleaning up, I bet.
Rich liberals are the only people who would like this tax. They must know it won’t generate a lot of money, it’s social engineering. Fascism. Bitter clingers, God, Guns, Coca-Cola.
“...it’s social engineering. Fascism. ...”
Scratch a Lib, find a Nazi underneath. It’s pretty simple, really.
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