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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
It sure makes a difference to the people buying it, that’s the point
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”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
I have never once seen this happen… i just see prices rise
Do you actually think that 100% a tax burden will always fall on consumers?