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Should Philly tax soda?

"It's easier than solving the pension mess, or paying off the stadium debt"

You can buy three liters of cola - 101 ounces - for 99 cents at our local ShopRite. It's cheaper than seltzer water, which means that the syrup and dye bottlers add are worthless.

Mayor Nutter's proposed 2-cents-an-ounce sugar-drinks tax would triple that price. OK by me. I do the weekly grocery buy for my family of eight. Our budget's $150. Meat, dairy, eggs, beans. Fruit, vegetables, spaghetti, crackers. But no sugar water, even though it's the cheapest thing in the store...

Why not tax soda? It's easier than solving the pension mess, or paying off the stadium debt, or laying off reliable voters. Or boosting taxes on workplaces, homes, and food that's good for you.

I'd feel different if I sold the stuff for my living.  "It's really a very onerous tax proposal. It's hitting at a very difficult economic time," Hank Lieberman, vice president and general counsel at Rose Group in Horsham, owned by New Hope-area resident Harry Rose, told me. "Restaurants are already struggling with the city's new menu-labeling mandate," which shows how much fat, sugar, and salt go into prepared food.

Rose Group runs 59 Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar restaurants and six Corner Bakery stores in Pennsylvania and neighboring states. That includes six Applebee's and a bakery in Philadelphia.

No other town in Rose's market area is pushing a soda tax, Lieberman told me. "My presumption is we would have to collect it from the consumer at the time of sale." Lieberman worries, for instance, that the Applebee's on the Philadelphia side of City Avenue could lose business to rival Bala Cynwyd chain restaurants that wouldn't face the tax.

It's not just the cost. "This is going to stigmatize the product. It's like what they've called a sin tax. Is this the equivalent of smoking a cigarette?" -- More in today's PhillyDeals column in the print Inquirer here.