Chicago pop tax?

I went to my local Mexican grocery store and bought a $1.49 bottle of Mexican coke. Tax on that bottle was 35 cents which is unusually high (over 20%).

The receipt breaks down the tax like this:

Hi Tax: $.15
Pop Tax: $.20

Does anyone know anything about a pop tax? I couldn't find anything online.

I believe it was 10 cents. Maybe it went up.

There is a 3 percent soft drink tax.

See viewtopic.php?p=264274#p264274
http://www.revenue.state.il.us/business ... tdrink.htm

Perhaps you were also charged a bottle deposit.

Yeah, 3% still doesn't explain the 20 cents, and if the pop tax did increase, it wouldn't have increased by that much. As far as I know, IL doesn't have a bottle deposit.

Hi,

I am looking forward to how this pans out. If this is indeed true, I wonder if BYO will extend to soda pop. I can easily drink Lake Michigan on ice just to avoid participating in another tax revenue opportunity.

Regards,

chuckywang wrote:Yeah, 3% still doesn't explain the 20 cents, and if the pop tax did increase, it wouldn't have increased by that much. As far as I know, IL doesn't have a bottle deposit.

I think the double tax charge was a mistake in the programming of the register. It should have either picked only the soda-tax, which already includes the sales tax, or the programmer should have made the soda-tax exclusive of the sales tax. The math makes sense. 10% sales-tax = 0.15, 3% pop tax= 0.045, pop tax + sales tax = 0.195, rounded up to 0.20. Anyhow, I think you got double-taxed on that purchase. Just be grateful you didn't buy a case.

d4v3 wrote:

chuckywang wrote:Yeah, 3% still doesn't explain the 20 cents, and if the pop tax did increase, it wouldn't have increased by that much. As far as I know, IL doesn't have a bottle deposit.

I think the double tax charge was a mistake in the programming of the register. It should have either picked only the soda-tax, which already includes the sales tax, or the programmer should have made the soda-tax exclusive of the sales tax. The math makes sense. 10% sales-tax = 0.15, 3% pop tax= 0.045, pop tax + sales tax = 0.195, rounded up to 0.20. Anyhow, I think you got double-taxed on that purchase. Just be grateful you didn't buy a case.

Thanks, this was my suspicion as well. I think it's time to give the grocery store a friendly phone call.