Boris is right — sin taxes clobber the poor and don’t even work
Hallelujah! A senior politician is finally standing up to the ever expanding Nanny State. Boris Johnson has today pledged to halt the explosion of ‘sin taxes’ unless and until there is sufficient evidence that they work and that they don’t unfairly clobber poor people.
Thankfully, we already have a significant amount of evidence from real-world experiments with sugary drinks taxes. It shows that they have no impact on obesity levels, disproportionately take poor people’s money, and ruin popular drinks. But this won’t stop Britain’s powerful public health lobby from fighting tooth and nail to obfuscate the evidence and insist on the need to control people’s lifestyles. Boris’s intervention, though, may prompt a reversal of our descent towards a paternalistic dystopia.
For the sake of argument, let’s accept the deeply flawed assumption that we’re in the midst of a childhood obesity epidemic. We can even give credence to the idea that the comparatively small amount taxpayers spend on obese people through the NHS is a legitimate reason to exert greater control over everyone’s lives. None of this justifies measures like the sugary drinks tax. Most people simply pay up, switch to other high calorie drinks (like fruit juice), buy their sugary drinks from elsewhere, or downgrade to less expensive own-brands. This is exactly what happened across the United States when soda taxes were introduced, with no evidence that their implementation in Mexico or Chile budged overall calorie consumption. Any miniscule reductions are poorly targeted — the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that those who consume the most sugar are the least likely to change their behaviour in response to the tax.
Then there’s the fact that taxing sugar indisputably hurts the poorest the most. Put simply, a tax on everyday items like sugary drinks takes a higher share of the least well-off’s income. Sales taxes like VAT are similarly regressive, but unlike sin taxes, their revenues are at least partially redistributed for the purpose of boosting poorer people’s incomes. The common refrain from public health lobbyists is that taxing a can of Coca-Cola is progressive in health terms. Aside from redefining a well-established term in economics to satisfy their own rhetorical ends, this can only be true if sugar taxes produce health benefits for the poor that outweigh the hit to their pockets. Recent research (which doesn’t address overall calorie intake) suggests that this is unlikely — we’ve seen in places like Chile that have a sugary drink tax that the effect on consumption is far less in lower socio-economic groups who switch brands or product, or just cough up and pay the tax.
It ruins popular drinks too. Lucozade’s reformulation caused a huge drop in sales, because their new lower-sugar recipe tastes pretty awful — just check out Twitter’s reaction. Scots stockpiled original Irn-Bru which now sells for £3.99 a can. These small inconveniences add up to a slightly less satisfying, greyer existence — and it’s more than that for some people. Diabetics found themselves in a climate of confusion as the new Lucozade recipe was slowly rolled out, with concerns that people who used the drink to treat dangerous low blood sugar levels were being put at risk.
Sin taxes like this aren’t just a slippery slope — they’re part of a paternalistic avalanche. After years of Theresa May’s Government capitulating to the killjoys, we’re seriously considering banning Tony the Tiger, plain packaging our crisp packets, and will most likely end up with failed fat taxes.
If it wants to improve public health while respecting liberalism and evidence, the Government needs to put down the stick and start offering people the carrot. Widening access to healthier lifestyle options is more effective and fair than clamping down on individual choice. Just as smoking alternatives like vaping have helped smokers, giving people easier access to their health records through Open Healthcare, building more cycle lanes, and funding sports in schools will help those struggling with their weight. And it can all be done without pinching the pay packets of poor people who fancy the occasional Pepsi.
