by Marion Nestle

Currently browsing posts about: Taxes

Feb 14 2024

The World Health Organization: Health Taxes (e.g., on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages)

The UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) has long led efforts to tax unhealthy products, starting with tobacco.

WHO describes its health tax efforts here.

It recently issued Global report on the use of sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, 2023.

The report finds that 108 countries have some kind of tax on sugar-sweetened beverages.

But, it finds

Less than a quarter of countries surveyed account for sugar content when they impose taxes on these non-alcoholic beverage products. Countries with a sufficiently strong tax administrative capacity are encouraged to tax beverages based on sugar content, as it can encourage consumers to substitute with alternatives that have lower sugar content as well as incentivize the industry to reformulate beverages to contain less sugar.

One of its major overall findings:

Among its conclusions are these:

  • Existing taxes on SSBs could be further leveraged to decrease affordability and thereby reduce consumption. While other perspectives and competing factors have to be accounted for when designing taxation policies, the protection of health should be a key consideration, particularly considering the health and economic burden associated with obesity and diet-related NCDs.
  • This report concludes that excise taxes on SSBs are not currently being used to their fullest potential. Improving tax policy and increasing taxes so that SSBs become less affordable should be pursued more systematically by countries in order to effectively reduce consumption and prevent and control diet-related NCDs, including obesity and dental caries.

Here’s the evidence.  Get to work!

Resoures

Jan 11 2023

WHO calls for soda taxes

For your calendar today at 6:30 pm EST:

*****

The World Health Organization has taken a major step: it calls on member countries to tax sugar-sweetened beverages.

“Taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages can be a powerful tool to promote health because they save lives and prevent disease, while advancing health equity and mobilizing revenue for countries that could be used to realize universal health coverage,” said Dr Ruediger Krech, Director of Health Promotion at WHO.

SSB, tobacco, and alcohol taxes have proven to be cost-effective ways of preventing diseases, injuries, and premature mortality. SSB tax can also encourage companies to reformulate their products to reduce sugar content.

More than that, WHO has produced a manual on how to develop and implement SSB taxation policies.

This tax manual is a practical guide for policy-makers and others involved in SSB tax policy development to promote healthy diets and populations. It features summaries and case studies of SSB global taxation evidence, and provides support on the policy-cycle development process to implement SSB taxation — from problem identification and situation analysis through policy design, development and implementation to the monitoring and evaluation phase. Additionally, the manual identifies and debunks industry tactics designed to dissuade policy-makers from implementing these taxes.

SSB taxes can be a win-win-win strategy: a win for public health (and averted health-care costs), a win for government revenue, and a win for health equity.

The manual summarizes everything anyone needs to know to justify taxes and to craft policy.  Get to work!

********

For 30% off, go to www.ucpress.edu/9780520384156.  Use code 21W2240 at checkout.

 

Jul 27 2022

Taxing sugar-sweetened beverages: a how-to guide to legislation

We have Healthy Food America and the University of Washington, the UCONN Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health, and the Public Health Law Center at Mitchell Hamline School of Law to thank for this guide to tax legislation that will promote health and racial equity.

The report:

  • Reviews tax laws proposed and achieved in the US
  • Summarizes the experience of advocates and policymakers
  • Examines approaches used in alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis taxes
  • Recommends how to draft legislation to promote equity

The full report: Investing Sweetened Beverage Tax Revenues to Advance Equity: Recommendations for Drafting Legislation

The brief report is here.

An infographic provides a quick overview.

Other supporting materials are available on the Healthy Food America website.

Want to give this a try?  Here’s how.

Mar 18 2022

Weekend reading: Taxing Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Here’s a report from the World Health Organization on the effects of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages.

The study:

Consumption of SSBs is associated with increased risk of overweight and obesity (5), cardiovascular events (6), hypertension (7) and diabetes (8). There is now substantial evidence that SSB taxes can both discourage consumption and encourage reformulation (9,10). SSB taxes have also been found to have positive impacts on population weight and to potentially have greater health benefits among lower socioeconomic populations (11,12)….This study takes a policy analysis lens to studying SSB tax adoption and implementation in the WHO European Region. The focus was on the politicoeconomic and stakeholder dynamics in cross-sectoral policy-making, as well as considering adaptation in policy design.

https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/nutrition/publications/2022/sugar-sweetened-beverage-taxes-in-the-who-european-region-success-through-lessons-learned-and-challenges-faced-2022

https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/disease-prevention/nutrition/publications/2022/sugar-sweetened-beverage-taxes-in-the-who-european-region-success-through-lessons-learned-and-challenges-faced-2022

  • Be adapted to a country’s legislative, fiscal, economic and health context.
  • Be designed and implemented through collaboration between finance and health policy-makers.
  • Take revenues into consideration.
  • Expect opposition from industry.

On this last point, the report says:

SSB taxes were strongly opposed by actors in the food and beverage industry in all the study countries, before and after  implementation. Industry made strong public statements regarding the negative economic impact that the tax would have on industry, particularly in relation to employment. In Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland and Portugal, they also argued that the tax would be regressive and, therefore, have a negative impact on consumers. In Belgium, Finland, France and Hungary (notably, these were earlier taxes), industry actors raised concerns that the tax singled out beverages and/or the beverage industry for differential taxation. Industry actors also presented a range of arguments regarding the taxes being ineffective and poorly designed.

Soda tax advocates need strategies to counter this opposition.  Plenty are available.  See the toolkit at Healthy Food America, for example.

Jan 13 2022

Interested in soda taxes? Some resources

I received a notification of the output of a research team at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), which did an evaluation of local soda taxes. Its products and resources are available at UIC Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center (P3RC).

Among these are research briefs summarizing the available evidence base of U.S. sweetened beverage tax studies.

  1. Chriqui JF, Pipito AA, Asada Y, Powell LM. Lessons learned from the adoption and implementation of sweetened beverage taxes in the United States: A narrative review. Research Brief No. 119. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. June 2021.
  2. Powell LM, Marinello S, Leider J. A Review and Meta-analysis of Tax Pass-through of Local Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes in the United States. Research Brief No. 120. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. July 2021.
  3. Powell LM, Marinello S, Leider J, Andreyeva T. A Review and Meta-analysis of the Impact of Local U.S. Sugar-sweetened Beverage Taxes on Demand. Research Brief No. 121. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. August 2021.
  4. Marinello S, Powell LM. A Review of the Labor Market Impacts of Local Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes in the United StatesResearch Brief No. 122. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. September 2021.
  5. Leider J, Oddo VM, Powell LM. A Review of the Effects of U.S. Local Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes on Substitution to Untaxed Beverages and Food Items. Research Brief No. 123. Policy, Practice and Prevention Research Center, University of Illinois Chicago. Chicago, IL. November 2021.

An excellent source of information about soda taxes is available at Healthy Food America

And let’s not forget the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO)’s terrific report on soda taxes in Latin America.

Mar 31 2021

Soda taxes in Latin America

The Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO) has produced a report on soda taxes in the region.

What’s happening with soda taxes in Latin America is impressive.

Soda taxes, no matter where they are, seem to be doing what they are supposed to:

Latin America is a model for Dietary Guidelines (Brazil) and front-of-package warning labels (Chile).

Wish we could do these things.

Jun 29 2020

Industry-funded research, Australia style

A reader in Australia writes that she “just came upon a doozy of an industry-funded paper.”

Title: Sales of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages in Australia: A Trend Analysis from 1997 to 2018, by William S. Shrapnel and Belinda E. Butcher.  Nutrients 2020, 12, 1016; doi:10.3390/nu12041016.

Conclusion: Major, long-term shifts are occurring in the market for non-alcoholic, water-based beverages in Australia, notably a fall in per capita volume sales of SSBs and an increase in volume sales of water. Both trends are consistent with public health nutrition strategies for obesity prevention and suggest that the downward trend in the percentage of dietary energy from added sugars in the Australian diet may be continuing.

Funding and Conflicts of Interest: This analysis was funded by an unrestricted grant from The Australian Beverages Council Ltd. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

So what’s the problem here (besides the usual questions about the accuracy of the “no role” statement)?

The clue comes from an article in Food Navigator Asia: “Not a taxing question: Australian sugar sweetened beverage consumption slumps as obesity rates continue to soar.”

The article quotes a representative of the Beverage Council:

Obesity is multi-factorial, the reason why people become overweight and then obese, is because of the lack of physical activity, a sedentary lifestyle, and also poor diet…a sugar tax alone would not reduce the obesity rates in the country, and was a complex challenge for the government to overcome.  The beverage industry is against a sugar tax, and SSB tax.  The evidence and science behind the effectiveness of a sugar tax is weak.

Comment: The point of this study is to produce evidence against the value of soda or sugar taxes, even though sodas are still the largest source of sugars in Australian diets, and taxes have been shown to reduce consumption in other countries.  When it comes to sugary drinks, less is better.

Just for fun, here’s Healthy Food America’s 2019 map of countries with soda taxes.

 

Mar 17 2020

Desperate for good news? Two cheery items

We need some good news.   I can offer two items.

1.  Coca-Cola says it will align executive pay to employee pay

Coca-Cola has agreed to “consider the wages it pays all of its employees when setting executive salaries”, for the purpose of aligning them more closely.

This happened as the result of action by the New York State Common Retirement Fund.  The Fund complained that CEO compensation has increased enormously while average wages have made meager gains, to the point where the ratio of CEO to worker compensation has gone up in some instances by nearly 1,400%.

According to Food Dive’s account

Following the agreement with the beverage giant, the fund, which is among the company’s top 50 shareholders with 9,275,387 shares as of the end of 2019, withdrew a shareholder resolution against the company. Coca-Cola agreed to add language to its upcoming proxy statement that said “the compensation approach used to set CEO and (named executive) pay” would be the same one it uses to determine compensation for the broader workforce.

Food Dive points out that

Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey made about $18.7 million in 2019, according to a company spokesman. He was paid $16.7 million in 2018. As of April 1, 2019, Quincey’s base salary was increased 6.7% to $1.6 million “to align (it) with the competitive market,” the beverage company said in a recent proxy.

What this means in practice remains to be seen.  It’s hard to imagine that executives will get a pay cut but maybe employees will see a pay raise?  Let’s hope so.  In any case, cheers to State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli for using the Retirement Fund’s clout.

2.  While it lasted, Chicago’s Soda Tax worked

Chicago passed a soda tax but then rescinded it four months later under pressure from the American Beverage Association, which whipped up public opposition.

Now, a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, reports that during the months the tax was in effect, the sales volume of taxed sodas dropped by 27% in Cook County relative to St. Louis.  The net decrease was 21% after cross-border shopping was accounted for.

The tax raised nearly $62 million—in those four months—of which nearly $17 million went to a county health fund.

No wonder the American Beverage Association so strongly opposes soda taxes.

  • They reduce sales
  • They generate funds for health and social purposes