Timewaster's Guide Archive
General => Everything Else => Topic started by: Mad Dr Jeffe on September 15, 2003, 06:11:23 PM
-
Im thinking about writing an editorial on this as it has my hackles raised.
Its not the tax that bothers me, nor the luxury element of it (it targets a so called sin item) but the people targeted by the tax. Seattle coffee drinkers according to starbucks and other local coffee chains are students (either college or high school). Moreover the tax targets coffee in a specific form Espresso, and not the product as a whole.
Why should students with no children and low incomes be targeted to pay for daycare while other Washingtonians dont have to do anything. Add the 10 cents onto property tax or a prepared food tax (like here in virginia) and I would think the system was better targeted.
-
I don't know. When people start spending $5 for a tall glass of coffee common sense kind of leaves the picture. If people are willing to get gouged by Starbucks for coffee they probably won't mind getting gouged by the govt. too.
And it might even add a sense of pride. Seattle will really feel like the latte capital of the world if it has a latte tax.
-
1. Latte is not a constant source of revenue...
They are trendy, and could be replaced at any time by other trendy drinks.
2. 10 cents a cup may not seem like much, but if you buy a 2 lattes every day during the work week your out almost 50 bucks a year.
3. Lattes are too narrowly targeted... serious consideration should be given to taxing sodas or other beverages as well, with a broad base the tax could have lasting useful consequenses.
4. the money must be used for what it is levied
This is a common problem with our tax system. Excess monies generated are usually put into a slush fund and spent to use up the budget annually. Excess funds generated by the levie must be invested in bonds or some other money earning way and applied only to the purpose they were originally levied for.
-
But ok its cost right?
Why not tax every bucket of movie popcorn and large drink.
We know they dont cost 5.25 and 4.50 each right?
Lets think about where Espresso drinks are sold. Coffee houses right, so the express reason people go to coffee houses is to get espresso drinks.
So who feels the brunt of the tax? The whole tax base equally or a select few?
Tax Milk like that and you'd have a riot, tax pizza or chocolate and people would think you were crazy, but coffee is somehow different.
Can you explain how?
I can buy a Ghiridelli chocolate bar for 5 bucks and pay 37 cents in sales tax or a 5 dollar cup of coffee and pay 47 cents in sales tax.
It makes no sense.
-
1. who knows, in Seattle
2. if you buy 2 lattes at $5 apiece every workday for a year you've either got money to burn or bigger problems than being out $50 a year.
3. beverages are too narrowly targeted. Include all food.
4. I agree entirely.
I'm not disagreeing with you, really, but I still think the novelty factor is a big player in this. It's just another way for Seattle to set itself up as Latte City. Seattleites will buy into it. They bought into the monorail last year.
-
what they need to do is pay state income taxes and stop creating stupid little sales taxes.
-
Maybe they're just gently shifting the burden of the sales tax to sales that they can collect tax on. Right now no one has figured out how to structure and implement a tax on internet transactions, which make up a significant amount of transactions made. Although I doubt they're being that deliberate and strategic.
-
or we could all stop whinin' about it. Since no one in the discussion actually lives in Seattle and drinks their espresso.
-
Yeah, well you wish you did. :)
-
And quite apart from anything else, coffee is a ugly drink. It's like drinking sewage, except you pay for it.
If they taxed Tea, on the other hand...
-
1) You crazy brits already did tax tea. It lead to the loss of your colonies.
2) no, i've never had any desire to even visit Seatle, let alone live there. It sounds like a depressed and less refined England.
-
Actually you rebelled after we reduced the tax on tea. The real beef was that westminster was taking no heed of what you guys wanted. But let it be known that Americans are the only race who get up in arms, literally, about reduced taxes being applied.
:P
-
Oh like I didn't know it was an oversimplification. But so is yours. My thought still applies. Why you taxing tea if it's so sacrosanct?
-
Entropy is in fact right, the reduction of the Tea tax led smugglers like our founding father John Adams to organise revolutionary cells as thier livelyhood relied on illiegal Dutch Tea.
-
so you're telling me a few smugglers organized the entire revolution? nuh uh. Nope. Yes, it motivated people like that, but they had to use a larger issue to get people behind them.
-
I never said the whole revolution... that took the British Military occupation of Boston to do.
After the BTP the Brits were so ticked off at Boston that they moved thousands of troops into Boston.
Then they began asserting British law and controlls that had been notoriously absent in the colonies. These troops were in a situation fairly close to the one their in in Iraq (without the wholesale war beforehand of course) they didn't know who to befriend and who to work with. Eventually their bumbling and stumbling around got people killed on both sides. Combined with the fact that the first troops moved into Boston were known as some of the worst troops in the British Army with the least amount of discipline (still better organzied and trained than Bostonian Mobs of course) and that these soldiers were billeted illegally in private citizens homes without any compensation. Combined with an abortive march into the countryside to sieze arms from local militias and near anarchy the British turned a bad situation into an uncontrollable mess. Other colonies balked at the rough treatment of Bostonians (egged on by the radical New England press) and reasoned that if Boston was first where would the British stop. It was touch and go, but when New England erupted into full scale war the other colonies were really scared. Especially when the talk coming out of London equated all Americans with New Englanders at the time. The British then invaded Charleston SC and New York (both on the cusp of revolution, but likely to eventually side with the King (A general minority of rebels in those places) these futher invasions galvanised the resolve of Americans to resist the British.
-
Yes, i know all this. Which just goes to prove my theory that Germans LOVE David Hasselhoff.
Wait, wrong theory. It goes to prove that lowering taxes on tea did NOT start the Revolutionary war.
-
I happen to like Seattle and its environs, just for the natural beauty.
-
Seattle is neat, I particularly like the camping in the Olympics and Cascades.
-
Actually, i dont think Tea is taxed. There is a law against taxing food/drinks here in the UK, i think.