tax credits disproportionately affect woman. wages disproportionately affect woman. woman disproportionately represented in the tory party sugar or chocolate tax will disproportionately affect woman. jeez what is it with the tory's and there attitude towards woman? more into their livestock tho aint they? or is it deadstock? (allegedly) :smile:
The only difference a sugar tax would make is slightly increase the revenue into the Govt coffers........... It didn't work with cigarettes or alcohol, so why should it work with foodtuffs and sweets etc? But I wish Heinz and other manufacturers would remove the sugar from their Baked Beans........ .....I used to like Baked Beans, but I can't stand them now.
you have it totally right AL – if any general sugar lowering tactics are to be attempted then it needs to involve the manufacturers and get them to reduce their product sugar percentages.
As someone pointed out in an excellent letter to the Telegraph this morning, the key to healthy eating is education and education begins at home not at HM Revenue and Customs. They also suggested that if you really want to tax the things that make children fat, tax television, computer games and internet usage and lets see how that goes down. You can't tax people into good behaviour, all you do is allow the state to dip its hands further into people's pockets with, in this instance, a disproportionate percentage of the takings coming from those who are least educated and therefore least able to afford it. I can't believe that anyone but the mentally defective can still be unaware that living on processed fats, processed sugar, tobacco and alcohol is terminally bad for you but many will be unaware of how to eat well. (And it isn't about poverty either. Its cheaper to eat healthily than to live on processed industrial junk). No-one is forced to buy rubbish. Education is better than punitive taxation and then if people, when informed, still insist on eating themselves to death, that's their choice. Let them get on with it.
thing is.they dont eat them self to death, they become a burden to the health service, and what with carers allowance rising you will be paying for it. how many people do you know with diabetes? i never used to know anyone now i now three
I suspect that a good number of people feel that taking away their comfort (i.e. unhealthy) food and TV shows leaves them asking the question, "Why would I want to live longer if I cannot have the things that make life bearable for me?". Now, you and I may know that there's more to life the cheese & crisps, Coca Cola, Minecraft and Strictly but not everyone shares that belief. In order for people to want to change their current unhealthy lifestyle habits, they need to want to be healthy and to want to live longer. This can only be achieved if they can find things that interest them that promote health - exercise, decent food, etc. Any ideas, anyone? You may well have some brilliant suggestions that have worked for you - running 2km a day, swimming, cycling, an interest in healthy cooking - but what suggestions do you have for the folks who aren't interested in any of these? I suspect I know the answer but let's allow this conversation to play out.
It is unclear what its proponents mean by a "Sugar Tax". * If they mean changing bags of Tate&Lyle's granulated sugar from zero rated to standard rated 20% VAT, that would be easy to do but would obviously have no effect at all on health or obesity. * If they mean increasing the rate of VAT on confectionery etc to a higher rate (i.e. above the standard 20%), that would complicate VAT collection considerably. Also there are many other categories of items for which there would a be a far stronger case for an increase than for sugar. It would mean having FOUR rates of VAT. * If they mean introducing a wholly new tax specifically for sugar, separate from VAT (perhaps on the lines of duty on alcohol), that would mean the creation of a hugely expensive, complicated, and bureaucratic new system. As usual, newspapers articles about the topic give no clue what they are actually talking about.
Wot's the matter with Strictly Why people engage in activities they know to be damaging is a complex subject and usually has roots in self image. Then there is the fact that sweet and fatty food is what our ancestors were programmed to crave and went to great lengths to source, we can now get them in our local supermarket at a knock down price. I have to agree with @Gimlet , provide the information to those who are prepared to listen and we all live with the consequences of our choices.
I think the chances are that if you educate rather than coerce through taxation, the costs of keeping alive the hardcore minority of the dim and the self-destructive would be largely off-set by the numbers of the formerly apathetic who armed with the necessary knowledge choose to improve their lives and their health. As evidenced by the decline of smoking. Speaking as a former smoker I don't believe taxation stops many people. Education and social pressure does, and perhaps for the intelligent majority, the inescapable realisation that your habit is catching up with your body and you are going to have to make a decision.
in this day and age if you canny say yer educated about health/drink and drug issues. i really cant imagine a time when it will. all said in the interest of this chat/debate of coarse. but again i really don't see a problem with taxing unhealthy food, other than for the party that proposes it.
Also, the argument that a tax on unhealthy foods offsets the healthcare costs incurred by those who overindulge in those foods only stands up if that revenue is specifically allocated to their care. If it simply disappears into the general kitty a bad food tax becomes nothing more than a revenue collecting exercise.
Discouraging A by increasing taxes on A; encouraging B by reducing taxes on B. Does it work? Marginally, perhaps, but if the demand for A and B is highly inelastic the effects will be minimal. For some products or pastimes, consumers are so highly resistant to being bullied by the authorities into changing their preferences, and so annoyed at being manipulated, that there can be counter-productive effects. These sorts of policies are largely window dressing. Politicians simply want to demonstrate that they are against A and in favour of B, so (although they can hardly affect the issue at all) they just make a gesture. That's what a tax on sugar would be: a gesture.
Does this mean that you favour hypothecated taxes? You do realise the many drawbacks of hypothecation?
No I don't favour hypothecated taxes. And that's one of my objections to punitive taxes on food stuffs. You'd have to favour HT's to argue that taxing unhealthy food off-sets the health costs of those foods. I don't believe it does. And I agree about the counter-productive effects of bossy, overbearing government. The officiousness of the ban on smoking in pubs certainly made me delay my quitting. I had wanted to stop for some time but carried on for about a year out of sheer bloody mindedness.
I think all hypothecarys should be taxed........ .....they are never open when you want to get a prescription filled.
I quite like the idea. It's bonkers that we feed so much sugar to our kids, either knowingly by giving them cans of Coke*, or unknowingly through buying the wrong kind of ready meals that are also loaded with (unneccessary) sugar to improve the flavour. It *will* improve health of the children, and that is a Good Thing™. Do I think this is the right way of going about it? I'm not so sure. There are arguments for and against, as everyone above have pointed out. The exhorbitant tax on smokers doesn't stop people from smoking, and adding 20p onto a bottle of Coke* may discourage someone who is counting the pennies from buying it and drinking water from the tap instead (at an average of 0.097p per litre...**) and may ultimately make the difference between a healthy kid and another fat kid with diabetes being a burden on the NHS... I do however think that there should be regulation to make it clear about the amount of sugar, measured in a standard way, across all soft drinks sold. Yes there already is regulation about labelling but these can be open to interpretation (and rigged on serving size) to make them nonsensical. One of Jamie Oliver's ideas was to include a "teaspoon" count of sugar level in each drink; small but easily equateable and it would help people make informed choices. From Jamie Oliver tells David Cameron to 'be brave' about sugar in fizzy drinks | Daily Mail Online * other sugar-water drinks are available ** tapwater.org - Frequently Asked Questions
I disapprove of hypothecation of taxes as a general rule, but with a few exceptions. Hypothecating TV licensing to the BBC, and congestion charges to transport, are better than the alternatives. Council tax is not exactly hypothecated, but it is restricted to be spent in the area from which it is collected. Certainly the main taxes (income tax, national insurance, VAT, and duties) should not be hypothecated.
