$.0175 per ounce beverage tax

[ABCVending]

Happy New Year my golpher - vendors are taking a hit courtesy the dancing monkeys setting policy up here.

A new Sweetened Beverage Tax of $.21 per 12 oz can took effect in Seattle on Monday.

Justification:

" idea is to discourage consumers from buying sugary drinks while raising revenue for nutrition and education programs."

Now my DN 5591's aren't looking so bad....gonna kill sales on the stackers.

Lucky I only have a couple accounts actually within city limits - and you can bet am going to try and fill those bottle drops with everything and anything that circumvents the tax criteria.

Anyone else dealing with this sort of thing?

 

 

[AngryChris]

No, but i wouldn't be surprised if vendors start dropping like flies and losing/gaining accounts everywhere.

[vendcobros]

Pretty outrageous huh? We only have a few accounts affected by this, what an accounting nightmare!

We've explained to the managers that its a tax imposed by city of seattle, so far nobody has given us a hard time. You can bet it will decrease sales substantially though.

[Southeast Treats]

Question for you guys - how is the tax paid?  Do you pay it thru your suppliers, or is it like sales tax and you have to compute it and send it in yourselves??

[vendcobros]

2 hours ago, Southeast Treats said:

Question for you guys - how is the tax paid?  Do you pay it thru your suppliers, or is it like sales tax and you have to compute it and send it in yourselves??

Good question. We'll be meeting with our accountant to figure out how the state expects it to be notated.

My guess is we'll be responsible for keeping track of fluid ounces sold and reporting it separately for Seattle zip codes. We buy product with a reseller license so the supplier doesn't charge us tax.

I think the tax is supposed to be collected on anything that doesn't have nutritional value... which is pretty much anything except water and 100% juices. Diets, zero water, standard juice, etc still get taxed. Don't worry though, they excluded alcohol from the tax. 

[Southeast Treats]

Of course, but alcohol is already taxed to the max anyway.... wondering if the VMS programs like ParLevel would help keep track of it, I know they have subsections for taxes that can be broken up by area or by machine groups....

[vendcobros]

1 hour ago, Southeast Treats said:

Of course, but alcohol is already taxed to the max anyway.... wondering if the VMS programs like ParLevel would help keep track of it, I know they have subsections for taxes that can be broken up by area or by machine groups....

I use a custom excel script so I can do the accounting. It's just not what I want to spend my time on. Already stretched thin enough, now adding more time giving money away. 

[AngryChris]

If you taxed everything high enough, no one would buy anything.  That's the wonderful thing about how raising taxes works.  The government's perspective is often this: higher taxes = more tax money to "give back" to the people via water fountains and maybe a new statue.  On the other hand, you evil profit-hungry businesses should stop ripping people off with over-priced drinks that make people fat and give them what they really want - calorie-free coconut water with added vitamins, minerals, electrolytes, and carcinogens.