How can you tax something that I do not understand?
Josh Austin called me today ranting and raving about a tax in Maine on this thing called “juice”. Intrigued, by both the item “juice” and the concept of a tax on something I have never heard of, I searched for it on the interwebs. What I got was information on the “Soft Drink and Syrup Tax“.
But, upon reading the specifics of the tax, it seems to be more of a tax on drink than on this “juice” product.
The tax is levied on “Simple syrups”, which are defined as “…a mixture of sugar and water.” Which, as we all know, is two-thirds of the ingredients in drink. It is also applied to “…any fruit or vegetable drink containing 10% or less of natural fruit juice…” And, as we all know, drink containes 0% fruit juice (it instead contains either purple, green, orange, or another color to indicate which 100% fruit juice it is intended to replace).
However, the tax is NOT levied on “Juice or vegetable concentrate with more than 10% juice or Juice or vegetable drinks containing more than 10% juice.”
Obviously, this tax is unfairly targeting drink, unnecessarily inflating the costs of what is an otherwise inexpensive commodity.
More on drink can be found here.
