Obviously the Coca Company needs to also have an insulin division so they can win on both ends of the Right To Drink Sugary Shit.

Regressive taxes are bullshit no matter what it is they're taxing.

Fuck the rich. I hope they all go bankrupt and then die in misery.

@2 Vertical integration!

Buy at the Costco on 99 @ 205th

So I can shoot up heroin in Seattle but will be taxed to buy a soda? There is such a thing as one party overreach.

There is no perfect way to implement a tax like this. No. Perfect. Way. So the *best* way is to keep it really simple. "Drinks with added sugar" is a simple way to define it. If you include diet drinks, you open it up to all sorts of shades of gray (What's 'diet'? Does it only get a tax if it has aspartame? What if a new sweetener is developed that's not explicitly specified in the legislation? Do non-sweetened drinks get taxed? How sweet is 'sweetened'?). Trying to make a tax like this perfect instead of simple is why they almost always fail in getting passed. If such complicated legislation does pass, expect it repealed as soon as it becomes clear that the law wasn't written perfectly, so now (oh no!) the lovely local soda producer is getting taxed but the big corporate one found a loophole.

An example of trying to be perfect instead of simple, leading to failure to do anything at all: Food stamps cover food that is absolutely junk (chips, soda, donuts). Attempts to remove coverage from junk food (or increase it for healthy food, which tends to be expensive) pretty much always fails because those attempts are trying to be perfect instead of simple...they try to perfectly define what is junk, instead of keeping it simple and, for example, exempting drinks with added sugar (which would be a big step in a healthy direction).

If I'm reading this right, I'll pay the same tax for my "just one pump of hazelnut" latte as people who load theirs with sugar? And a bottle of locally made Dry Soda will have the same level of taxation as the super-sweet stuff? Wonderful.

But I won't have to pay the tax if I drink artificially-sweetened soda, unless you count the migraine I get from it as a tax.

Poorly thought out doesn't even begin to cover it.

Howzabout lowering the goddamn sales taxes around here, and instituting a fucking income tax.
I realize it's a God-given right for me to pay the same in income tax as Paul and Billy and them, but with Satan in the White (Again!) House, and the Four Horsemen breathing down our necks, surely we can defy the Deity for once in our meek little lives.

@6 Lactose is a totally different kind of sugar. That's why it has a totally different name!

@11 That would fix a lot of your problems.

Exempting diet drinks makes perfect sense, even if it makes the tax seem even more regressive. The point of the tax is to switch consumption preferences and the price differential will motivate more minorities and poor people to switch to diet drinks, which has a much bigger likelihood of being a permanent lifestyle change than insisting everyone drink still water because...everything we know about human behavior. This is an example of good governmental paternalism, and the rich need less patronizing because they aren't drinking as much sugary soda!

Exempting "diet" drinks is stupid, because they taste terrible, and aren't functionally "better" for you since they are still a weird chemical cocktail in a can infused with bubbly gas. (Every read the ingredients? Freaky stuff.)

And wait, fruit juices will be taxed under this new regime too? Crikey. I thought it was just, you know, "soda", like the label on the tin said.
Great.

Fuck stupid "Liberal Progressive" Washington and it's regressive tax structure.

All of you are total crybabies.
"Next you'll want to tax gasoline! The sky is now falling!" - Oh wait.
"Next you will want to tax liquor! The world is over!" - Oh wait.
"Next you will want to tax our cars! The terrorists win!" - Oh wait.
"Next you will want to tax our food! Obama wins!" - Oh wait.
"Next you will want to tax our babies! Trump wins!" - Oh wait.

Until there is a SEA CHANGE, meaning income tax, you are going to see these little shitty taxes forever and ever. It simply has to be that way if you want government services that you can whine about endlessly. @13 we are looking at you.

@14 Nothing about the soda tax, or any vice tax, is designed to replace or compensate for the lack of an income tax.

Vice taxes work by discouraging behaviors that, while individual, contribute to negative externalities that effect everyone, like obesity and diabetes.

The goal is to reduce sugar consumption. Not fund your public schools.

You'll need to fund schools with an income tax AND tax sugar if you want kids who are both intelligent AND healthy.

This is why I am a liberal and NOT a progressive. The Seattle City Council is as much in a delusional bubble as any batshit Trumper. Stone cold tone deaf.

Remember the '04 governor's race. Ron Sims came up a really good income tax plan that limited the sales tax to 1% all of which would go to the cities, cut the property tax, eliminated all business taxes that punish them for hiring more people and replaced it all and then some with a progressive income tax. Sims went right into the lions jaws with it and convinced a lot of business people to support it. But Gregoire came out and said, "Let's be honest, Ron, this is just a tax increase." The posters above talking about all this shitty regressive taxes are right.

One of the many reasons I avoid Seattle. So incredibly batshit insane and stupid. WHY does Seattle think it's so fucking insular? Not only is it regressive, but, all ya gotta do is STEP OUTSIDE SEATTLE! This does NOTHING for 'health concerns' (look how high booze and tobacco taxes are, and they're still big business), and stomping on poor people, minorities, and small businesses. Goddammit, I'm considered a Democrat/liberal/progressive or whatever, but sense is sense, and Seattle has NONE! So, if I have to go into Seattle, and I think I might want a soda, I just bring it with me. Or, I go just outside city limits to buy it to avoid their ridiculous tax. Times that times thousands of people, small businesses within city limits lose out, poor people pay more of their limited funds. You shouldn't be taxing the hell out of peoples' FREE WILL!