Cook County, Illinois, Experiences Disastrous Rollout of Its Soda Tax
13th June 2017
Government employees one again set records for incompetence.
County officials, however, had intially planned to tax distributors, who would pass along the cost in the final sale price of a sweetened beverage. Last Thursday cancelled that plan when the Cook County Revenue Department pointed out the sales price would still be subject to a sales tax.
A tax on a tax is illegal in Illinois.
Oops. (Well, so are guns, but that doesn’t stem gun violence among the underclass.)
When the county made the soda tax a line item at the point of sale it ran afoul of the Department of Agriculture, which advised it was against federal law to tax transactions paid for with benefits from its Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) program.
The SNAP waiver exempts roughly 873,000 Cook County residents from the soda tax.
Oops again.
June 13th, 2017 at 10:32
So the poor – who the government is trying to “protect” from their own gullability – are exempt from the protection?!?
Monty Python could not script Cook County’s government.
But I honestly would pay to see them do the Fish Dance.