You're listening to Taking Stock with Kathleen Hayes and Pim Box on Bloomberg Radio, the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and of course the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, all immortalized by Sylvester Stallone. Now add to it, Philadelphia has become the first major US city to enact a soda tax, the city Council approving a one and a half cents per ounce levy on sugary and artificially sweetened beverages.
Here to tell us more is Annabelle Gibson, Managing Editor, Bloomberg b an A, a wholly owned subsidiary subsidiary of Bloomberg Gets, a leading source of legal, regulatory and business information for professionals. Annabelle, thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for having me tell us about this soda tax and some of the issues surrounding this tax. Well, Philadelphia's tax is want to have sense per fluid ounce. And that doesn't sound like a lot because it's just
you know, an extra little penny and a half. But when you added up determining how many ounces are per leader or per can, that's actually a whole extra dollar of tax per two leader bottle or even over two dollars in tax for those twelve packs of sodas that you buy in your grocery store, convenience store, or wherever. And that's a lot of money for cities and states
to generate revenue. And Philadelphia is actually estimating that they're going to be able to raise million dollars in revenue in the first year just from this one and a half cent tax that's going to start in well, and it's been something people been trying to do for a while, right to get these soda tax enacted. And of course
that rats revenues for states and cities. It also may over time reduce some costs for healthcare for medical care because if people drink fewer sugary sodas, there's all kinds of conditions they will not tend to develop as much, things like diabetes for example. Yeah. Um. And actually, cities and some states have been trying to do this for
several years now. There have been at least forty attempts or so since about two thousand nine of cities who have tried to have very similar taxes to this of one sense per ounce or two cents perouns and previously most um jurisdictions have attempted to tout these as ways to lower healthcare costs because they deter people from buying all these sugary beverages because they're less healthy options. So the ideas make them more expensive, very much like other
syntaxes like products on alcohol and tobacco war. They're made to be more expensive and less people will buy them. And Philadelphia took an interesting route is instead of really saying, oh, this is simply for a healthcare measure, they really supported it and proposed it to be a way to generate the revenue. So it really went an interesting route, and
other cities may try to do the same thing. Now since Philadelphia has been successful, and about what has been the the result of soft drink taxes in Arkansas and West Virginia, what have we learned? Well, Arkansas and West Virginia have taxes that are kind of similar, but they're actually a lot less when you look at the dollar amount.
I don't have how much revenue they raise, but Arkansas tax is only one cents per gallon for bottle drinks, so that's actually only about a tenth of a cent per ounce, so it's a lot less and West Virginia's tax is even less than that that. It's only one cent per sixteen point nine ounces as about a half a leader, so it's you know, point zero zero six cents per ounce, so it's a very little. They are definitely not the revenue generators. Even though they're for large
states they can make some money. But Philadelphia it's is actually a higher tax rate. And Gibson, thank you so very much for joining managing editor at Bloomberg b NA, joining us from Arlington, Virginia to talk about the soda tax attax on shore sweet and drinks that Philadelphia just successful be passed