03/28/2024

Philly Soda Tax Loses Fizz

In unsurprising news, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney’s budget proposal reduced the projected revenues from the city’s beverage tax by about 15 percent. For a multitude of reasons, revenues have not met expectations.

Soda tax revenue was already earmarked as the funding source for new pre-K seats, community schools, and other programs. As a result of missed revenue targets, these planned initiatives are adversely affected and have been scaled back. The unpopular soda tax was initially sold in part as a way to finance these programs that generally enjoy widespread support from voters. So far, the record shows these taxes cannot reliably be counted on to generate the projected amount of revenue.

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