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MercuryUprising@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

It should be taxed on the corporate side. Taxing sugar on the consumer side becomes a poor tax, because poor people will still want sweets from time to time, making those treats now more and more expensive. Well off people will just accept the tax because it’s marginal to them, but when your chocolate bar that you treat yourself to once a week goes from 1.29 to 3.29, then it really fucks your day up.

What should be done is incentives to provide less sugar/glucose-fructose on the product side and encourage companies to make snacks and beverages that have less sugar content.

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enragedchowder@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
It doesn’t make a difference which side you tax. If consumers are taxed then corporations will still feel it through reduced demand for their product. If corporations are taxed, consumers will still feel it through increased prices. The tax burden does not depend on who is taxed, but rather how elastic supply and demand are.

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- irmoz@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It sure makes a difference to the people buying it, that’s the point
  
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  - enragedchowder@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It literally doesn’t. The price is the same either way. Reduced demand from the higher tax makes it so producers will lower prices. This is really basic microeconomics.
    
    From Wikipedia: “tax burden does not depend on where the revenue is collected, but on the price elasticity of demand and price elasticity of supply”
    
    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
    
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    irmoz@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    Reduced demand from the higher tax makes it so producers will lower prices.
    
    I have never once seen this happen… i just see prices rise
    
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DrRatso@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Wouldn’t the price go up irrespective of which side you tax it on? Obviously if this is a megacorp, they could spread it out over unrelated products, but in the end its not like theyll roll over, take the corporate tax and leave the product at the old price. Is it being a poor tax even that bad of a thing? This is not a necessity and poor people are generally going to be the ones that suffer from poor diet / lifestyle choices in very big part due to the price/calorie aspect of junkfood et al. Lets be real, if you buy a bar once a week, 1.29->3.29 is not a big deal.

Also, we do have tax on sugarry soft drinks in the EU (atleast my country), it is just laughably small compared to EtOH and tobacco). I personally always have thought that anything with added sugar beyond a certain amount should get a heavy tax, conditional on this tax being funneled into healthcare / public health programs.

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psud@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Agreed. Though either way the price of heavily sugared stuff would go up

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