Rachel Reeves is preparing to bring in a milkshake tax in an attempt to reduce obesity levels despite the complete failure of the 2018 sugar tax that has seen obesity levels accelerate rather than fall. The Telegraph has more.
The Chancellor has drawn up plans to impose a sugar tax on milk and yoghurt-based beverages for the first time, after concluding that they are damaging public health.
The levy will drive prices up by as much as 24p a litre, with officials expecting 93% of drinks on the market to be affected unless they change their recipes.
Ms Reeves also intends to make an existing tax on fizzy drinks more onerous. This would force the makers of drinks such as Irn-Bru and Ribena to cut sugar content or face having to pay the tax.
The Treasury, which disclosed the plans in a consultation published on Monday, insisted that the anti-obesity move was needed because its current levy had not reduced the nation’s sugar intake, which is still twice the recommended levels.
However, experts accused Sir Keir Starmer of another breach of his election pledge not to raise taxes on working people.
Dr Christopher Snowdon, head of lifestyle economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said: “The sugar tax has been such a dramatic failure that it should be repealed, not expanded.
“It has been costing consumers £300 million a year while childhood obesity rates have continued to rise.
“To claim it has been a success on the basis of a hypothetical reduction of one calorie a day is absurd. Sugar taxes have never worked anywhere. What happened to Starmer’s promise to not raise taxes on working people?”
The sugar tax – officially the “soft drinks industry levy (SDIL)” – is set at 18p per litre, or 24p for higher-sugar drinks.
It was introduced in 2018 and Ms Reeves announced in October that she planned to extend it. However, she did not give details.
At present, only fizzy drinks with more than 5g of sugar per 100ml qualify for the tax, but the document said the Government is proposing to reduce this to 4g: a more “ambitious target”.
The change will capture drinks such as Sanpellegrino lemonade, which has 4.5g of sugar per 100ml, as well as the likes of Lucozade, Old Jamaica Ginger Beer and Fanta, all of which have reduced their sugar content to slightly below the existing 5g threshold.
Worth reading in full.
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Why not just tax body weight instead? Let the government define how heavy proper people of a certain height are allowed to be and tax every ounce above that at a certain rate. Or use a progressive model, as is used for the income tax: People have a certain weight allowance and once they’re above that, they have to pay progressively larger rates of weight tax depending on how obese they actually are. Another idea would be tax clothes progressively depending on waist size, starting from size 32 onwards.
NB: This is sarcasm. Rachel Thieves grasping at financial straws by taxing popular products using flimsy pretexts is something which shouldn’t ever happen. Either it’s a tax, then, its only legitimate purpose is raise money for the state. Or it’s some kind of fine for misbehaviour. In this case, misbehaviour needs to spelled out in law and the usual due process constraints for criminal punishments ought to apply. Especially, that people are only fined for actually being guilty of something. A skinny person buying a Coke shouldn’t have to pay an obesity fine for that.
NB^2: IMNEHO¹, the state has no business dictating people how much they’re allowed to weigh. Certainly no more than to prescribe certain hairdos.
¹ In my not entirely humble opinion.
HHGTTG See Chapter 8
Excellent post
I don’t want a “sugar tax” to “work” – whatever the hell that means.
It’s a tax, so surely its purpose is to raise funds for the next war.
Except Mullets of course. They should be banned.
For Christ sake don’t give Rachel from Accounts ideas.
Oh look. A dramatic fall in obesity levels in 2020. Whatever we were doing then really worked!
Rachel Reeves is preparing to bring in a milkshake tax in an attempt
to reduce obesity levelsto extend the marxo-fascist total-control state.These buffoons have completely lost the plot.
What next, a cake and biscuit tax?
Arguably a tax already exists, in part. Food is generally zero rated for VAT except (From food products (Vat Notice701/14)):
It would only take an amendment to extend VAT to all cakes and biscuits.
I hope you were waiting for someone to point out that:
Food products (VAT Notice 701/14)
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/food-products-and-vat-notice-70114
Zero rated: Cakes including sponges, fruit cakes, meringues, commemorative cakes such as a wedding, anniversary or birthday cakes
Standard rate: Cakes supplied in the course of catering (subject to the temporary reduced rate) — read Catering, takeaway food (VAT Notice 709/1)
See sections 3.4 and 3.6 especially.
Dammit. Discoveredjoys beat me to it.
But a McVitie’s Jaffa Cake is a cake, not a biscuit. It really makes so much sense, doesn’t it?
Who will rid me of these troublesome politicians?
Socialists and collectivists believe that nothing should be outside state control. Introducing ‘sin taxes’ is what they do. It makes them feel superior.
I think they’re mainly interested in raising money. Indirect taxes raise lots of that because they affect large numbers of people and because the individual amounts paid are rather small, there’s less political resistance to that. Especially considering that they disproportionally burden poor people and not rich people¹.
¹ Indirect taxes or consumption taxes, as they’re also called, are taxes on spending money for something. This means people’s income is heavier taxed when they have to spend it than when they can just keep it.
Just a way to raise taxes.
“Obesity” is like “climate change” an invention without any objective, empirical basis.
Isn’t it strange. They think a lemonade tax will cut lemonade consumption but don’t think an employment tax will cut employment. This whole farrago typifies the lying, deceitful times we live in. We’ll never get this country back unless and until we stop telling lies and deceiving one another. It really is that simple.
Excellent point, well made.
On that basis, the Inheritance Tax should cut dying.
I’m wondering what this leave the council tax for, minus people wishing for less council. There doesn’t seem to be a way to avoid it.
Or that increasing the cost of labour – minimum wage – won’t reduce labour consumption = fewer jobs.
…stop deceiving one another: accepting the truth that we swapped a vibrant, innovative, inventive industrial base for a cradle-to-the-grave welfare state now supporting all the impoverished incoming dross from the World’s shiteholes, complete with dysfunctional health service, by increasingly transferring our wealth into propping it up instead of investing in industry and we now have a rising bill of £2.8 trillion to show for it, and a reliance on China to make what we can no longer make for ourselves.
Is there no limit to this woman’s stupidity?
Unlikely.
So people will drink less milkshakes, which means less demand for milk. A double whammy – tbey get to raise more tax or further immiserate farmers! Sha-ting!
What if people make milkshakes at home??? Its been done before. Get out your old made in china blender. Ice cream and strawberries. Maybe they will send the cops to your house. The home anarchist cookbook.
That would be a Non-crime Milkshake Event – expect a call from the police.
So if we indulge the idea that putting a tax on certain products will cut consumption of them (either by raising the retail price or lowering output) , then how can you possibly suggest that putting a tax on the farming industry will not do the same and either cut agricultural output or make food less affordable?
Just the last in a long list of contradictory policies by these nutters (like experiments in sun-dimming, while at the same time pushing for more energy produced by solar farms).