Great work, Jean.

I still blame you for selling our park land to Chihulhy for $1.

Except there is a tax on prepared food.

Box of a dozen frozen corndogs = Not Taxed
Single Corn Dog sitting under a heat lamp for 6 hours = Taxed

Remember how vital all that stuff the stupid "Latte Tax" was supposed to pay for? Yet we voted it down because it was a stupid gimmick by leaders who refuse to fix what's really wrong with our tax structure. (We need progressive income tax at the city, county and state level, in place of these punishing sales taxes.)

One of the ways you can recognize this as a gimmick to shore up the budget instead of an honest attempt to fight obesity is that it's too small of a tax to really make anyone cut down on junk food.

By the way, every time you slap another teeny tiny little incremental increase in sales tax on anything, some corporation somewhere is going to oppose it because that's who makes shit and sells shit: corporations.

Is there no soda bottling or candy making union who can jump up and play the good guy in the ideological melodrama? Because any shit made and sold has a union somewhere.

You can't support every single regressive sales tax increase just because, a) it pays for stuff we want or b) some corporation opposes it. Oh, wait, you do support any and every sales tax increase? Do you?

Next budget cycle, there is going to be another "emergency" and another gimmick sales tax increase. It will be so small it will seem almost painless, and it will probably be on some product that isn't good for you. Planning on supporting that tax increase too? Or is there ever a limit?

@4, 5 - This could be Canada where there is upwards of 15% sales tax (provincial sales tax plus federal sales tax). Quit yer whining.

@3 There always has been a tax on prepared food like, you know, in restaurants and hot dog stands.

Is anyone else getting the irony of this--If the American Beverage Assn. had handed the State $16 million in the beginning we could have cancelled the tax and saved everyone a lot of trouble and expense.

@6 it's not a sales tax if you call it a VAT or PST or GST or whatever name it is this year.

@6, 8, 9

It is a sales tax in Canada -- provincial sales tax and general sales tax, that's what PST and GST stand for. But I don't think it's 15% total in any province -- it maxes out, as far as I know, at 13% (here in Ontario as well as in the Maritimes). Alberta's is 5%, the base GST.

Oh, and it's worth noting that, as a result, we have a functional education system, amazing transit throughout most of the country, the lowest debt per capita in the developed world, and, of course, single-payer healthcare.

Have fun eliminating even more tax base and then passing more Eyman initiatives! Let me know how that works out. (I'm a Washington state expat whose ballot still goes there, which is why I follow all this as close as I do.)

Cow. In the US, the full rate of sales tax is charged for every sale. If you add up the total taxation for every single sale that could have taken place in the process of an item going from raw materials to final consumer, it can equal far more than 10% or 15%. Or it can be very little -- it really depends. The point of VAT is that it avoids this cumulative effect. To compare the total accumulated VAT that a consumer pays while ignoring all the sales taxes and other corporate taxes and business taxes (such as Washington's B&O tax) that were collected on an item before the consumer bought it -- well that's apples and oranges. The whole comparison with Canada is a red herring.

Hey. Ever noticed that our dear leaders always find the saddest poster child they can to hold hostage for their ever-increasing sales taxes? Why is it, exactly, that they choose these particular programs to go on the chopping block if their gimmick band-aid doesn't pass?

@12 no, actually, that's wrong.

Many groups don't pay sales tax. This is what the anti-middle-class tax exemptions do.

You'd know that if you worked for a tax-deductible non-profit in certain fields, the military, the feds, the state, the port, or a county or municipal level government agency.

In fact, a lot of what for-profit firms do is also tax-exempt. Just ask Intel or Microsoft.

Isn't this one of the cases where the state could ignore the initiative and re-impose the tax in two years? If the legislature had any guts, they'd do that effective the first possible day. Which means instead they'll actually propose a constitutional amendment banning a tax on sugar forever.

I believe that It Isnt't right for the goverment to do this. They are trying to make use raise our children like they want them to be raised. You can't tell people what they can and cannot eat.