I was looking at a grocery receipt, and there are three different tax rates depending on the items. The receipt doesn’t even specify which items are taxed at which rate - just the total at each percentage.
I understand the goal of lower or higher taxes on groceries is to incentivize purchasing healthier options over more processed foods, but does it really affect purchasing decisions when the final price of the items is opaque to the consumer?
My belief that it’s intended to incentivize behavior is from talks about things like the “soda tax,” where some goods are taxed at a different rate to try to reduce consumption
I don’t understand how they can be effective when you don’t see the price on the sticker, though
Yeah, I agree the tax needs to be visible in the price to be effective
Things intended to incentivize healthier behavior are generally referred to as vice taxes, and yeah, we don’t do well at those.
We have vice tax to discourage smoking, drinking alcohol and probably a few other things but they’re completely ineffective. They really need to be a lot higher and to be more well known. For example, I have no idea what the alcohol tax in my locale is so it does not affect my behavior. Actually, the neighboring state advertises no alcohol tax so the only affect might be taking a road trip to stock up on alcohol. I do support the idea of raising that until it hurts to choose alcohol, except that it would hurt most those who can afford it least.
I like the idea of vice taxes in general, as a way to leverage the power of capitalism to improve public health. I dont know if they really work though, just that we haven’t gone far enough to see if it would work