The late John Denver only sang of a metaphorical “Rocky Mountain High” – post-legalized recreational marijuana, it seems far more tangible today! A ballot initiative in Boulder Colorado that would impose a tax of $.02 per ounce on sugary drinks sold within the city is being challenged by residents. The city council approved placing the…
Read More »Maybe it’s the sunshine, or the “healthy living”, but mandated sick leave is spreading to more communities in the Golden State as next month three major municipalities will foist the mandated benefit onto private employers beginning July 1. The state of California began mandating paid sick leave one year ago – after meeting a 30…
Read More »Since it had already passed a preliminary vote last week, it is not surprising that the Philadelphia City Council voted yesterday to impose a 1.5 cents-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks sold in the City of Brotherly Love. On a 13 – 4 vote, the council gave Mayor Jim Kenney the victory on a reduced tax…
Read More »San Francisco and Oakland have been pushing to have the tax adopted, but thus far their voters have rejected the idea – so, San Francisco went to a Plan B. While they work to get the issue back on the ballots and convince the electorate to enact the tax, the “City by the Bay” enacted…
Read More »First it was Michael Bloomberg and his fixation with banning retail stores from selling oversized sugary drinks in a single cup (customers would have been allowed to buy multiple small drinks, but apparently that’s another matter); then (where else?) the City of Berkeley, California became the first in the nation to assess an additional tax…
Read More »In keeping with this new fixation on sugar intake, the City Council in Philadelphia has yet to get too sweet on Mayor Jim Kenney’s idea of taxing sugary beverages. This week, there was word, albeit inaccurate, that a committee vote on the issue was planned for Wednesday, when in reality, the Council is expected to…
Read More »The California Assembly is considering the latest sugary drink legislation, AB-2782, a bill that will require distributors to pay $.02 per ounce into a new government fund to fight obesity. The bill, summarized here and pending in the Assembly Health Committee, was slated this past week for a public hearing which was ultimately postponed. It…
Read More »A few weeks back, we advised you about Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney’s initiative to place a $.03 cent per ounce tax on sugary drinks. This week, he introduced his pro-soda tax coalition, which he called “Philadelphians for a Fair Future”. I’m not quite sure if there’s a logical nexus between sugary drinks and “fairness”, but…
Read More »In case you were thinking government overreach was limited to the US, rest assured that is not the case. To the contrary, within the past month, both the United Kingdom and Canada have announced plans to apply an additional tax on sugary drinks. In England, the U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne introduced a…
Read More »New Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney included a $.03 cent per ounce tax on sugary drinks as an integral revenue component for his first budget as Mayor of the City of Brotherly Love. Kenney, who opposed the $.02 soda tax that his predecessor Mayor Michael Nutter had proposed, didn’t take long to change his stripes into…
Read More »