Economics 101 and Soda Taxes by Dan Mitchell

 It is not difficult to understand the economics of taxation. Simply stated, the more you tax of something, the less you get of it.

You can show the adverse impact of taxation with supply-and-demand curves (very helpful for understanding “deadweight loss“).

But you don’t need to be an economist to grasp the essential idea that we shouldn’t impose excessive penalties on productive behavior.

This is why I endlessly argue for lower tax rates on things that are very good for society, such as work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. Simply stated, governments should minimize barriers to the creation of wealth and prosperity.

But what about using the tax code to punish things that are bad for society?

Consider, for instance, taxes that are designed to discourage obesity. I personally don’t think politicians and bureaucrats should try to dictate our lifestyle choices, so I’m not overly sympathetic to imposing special taxes on things like sugar.

But I also recognize that people do respond to incentives, so maybe such taxes would work.

Though it’s also possible that we might get unintended consequences, which is the message of Baylen Linnekin’s new article for Reason.

A new study is pouring cold beer on Seattle’s soda tax. …since the city I call home adopted a soda tax in 2018, residents have swapped out soda and replaced that soda with beer. Pointedly, the study says Seattle’s soda tax “induced” consumers to buy more beer. …The PLoS study, by University of Illinois-Chicago researchers Lisa M. Powell and Julien Lader, compared sales of beer in Seattle both before and since adoption of the soda tax with comparable sales in nearby Portland, Oregon, which has no soda tax. “At two-years post-tax implementation, [the] volume sold of beer in Seattle relative to Portland increased by 7%,” the authors report. Though supporters of soda taxes claim (largely without evidence) that they’re a successful tool to combat obesity, the authors of the PLoS study note that the dangers of “excess alcohol consumption [include] higher risk of motor accidents/deaths, liver cirrhosis, sexually transmitted diseases, crime and violence, and workplace accidents.” Also: obesity. …”It’s hard to overstate the abject failure of soda taxes to deliver on their promised benefits,” Reason Foundation’s Guy Bentley wrote several years ago… “Nowhere in the world, let alone the United States, have soda taxes reduced obesity.”

Here’s a link to the study for those interested.

The obvious takeaway is that imposing an anti-obesity tax may not be very effective if consumers can easily switch to a different product with some of the same characteristics (i.e., lots of calories).

And such a tax may wind up making society worse off if the original problem (obesity) isn’t solved and new problems (drunk driving, etc) are created.

So what’s the solution? Politicians presumably will look at the results of the study and argue that beer taxes also should be increased.

And then when they learn that people will drive to different cities to buy beer and soda (as happened when Philadelphia imposed such a tax), they’ll argue for statewide tax harmonization. And when that leads to cross-state shopping, they’ll push for federal harmonization.

Maybe, just maybe, they should leave people alone. In a free society, you should have the right to control your own life, even if it means making decisions that some people don’t like.

P.S. Nobody should be surprised when Seattle politicians enact bad policy.

P.P.S. Since we now know that soda taxes backfire, you also won’t be surprised to learn that marijuana taxes backfire. And tobacco taxes.

P.P.P.S. To the extent these taxes are successful, we get more evidence of the Laffer Curve. That happened in Berkeley. And it happened in Mexico.