Let me be clear and unambiguous: I fully support this tax and think it should’ve been introduced a long time ago.
And they have, in some US cities. But before that, is sugar really that bad?
It’s worse. In short, the sugar industry has been paying an influential Harvard scientist to produce shitty science, claiming that fat makes you fat, starting about half-a-century ago. If you’re the kind of person who reads, you probably know this already. If not, have a look at some sugar documentaries on YouTube. I might add some commented links later.
One thing to remember is that sugar is 8 times more addictive than cocaine.
Which is why it’s in everything, including table salt.
But let’s stay focused on the tax. There’s even a wiki page on this tax (wiki-sugtax) and another one on marketing influence (wiki-infl).
There are also some recent studies / articles on Philadelphia (cn-phil), Berkeley (scid-brkly) and NYC (nih-nyc) who introduced their own taxes. About Hungary – just a heads-up (hn-ung).
The important question is, could Daniel Anghel, Partener și Liderul departamentului de servicii fiscale și juridice PwC România be fair in his own article (link below?).
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Now I know that the above is not very convincing, chiefly because I didn’t tie all my sources together. But again, the news got in front of me (hn-12aug):
He said the Government proposes RON1 billion for a fund providing money to local communities, with an additional RON700 million coming from the Regional Development Ministry.
And he said a measure aimed at introducing a tax on beverages with high sugar concentration, which was opposed by the industry, and which also included other measures would be further discussed before any decision is taken.
A series of ministries lose a lot of money following the correction - the Education Ministry leads the pack with RON 1 billion less. The European Funds minister suffers a loss of RON 681.9 million, with cuts of several hundred millions also reported for the Research Ministry, Agriculture Ministry and Business and Trade Ministry.
Cuts are also announced for the Economy Ministry, the Government Secretariat, Waters and Forestry Ministry, Transport Ministry and the Food Safety Authority.Meanwhile, more money is allocated to the Finance Ministry, the Regional Development and Public Administration Ministry, the Romanian Intelligence Service, Labor Ministry, Environment Ministry.
Whether this government passes the sugar tax, considering the terrible measures of shuffling money around from ministries that need it to those that are more likely to generate votes, just announced, is a test of how corrupt it is in the end.
And really, if they have difficulties selling the tax to sugar addicts, all they need to do to sex it up is to call it “anti-aging”, which it is.
Sources / More info: hn-sugartax, wiki-sugtax, wiki-infl, tpc-br, npr-works, cn-phil, nih-nyc, scid-brkly, hn-txbr, hn-ung, hn-indu, hn-12aug