Taxes Everywhere
A while back, I blogged about taxing candy. Illinois is now getting into the act. Recently, most candy went from being taxed 1 percent (or maybe 2.25 percent…the article I got this from is a little confusing) to being taxed 6.25 percent…a pretty hefty jump. This is because the Illinois Department of Revenue is now calling certain candy and soft drinks “general merchandise” instead of “qualifying food and drugs”.
It gets confusing though because the reclassification also means if it contains flour, it can’t be called candy. And some candy bars contain flour so retailers might be confused for a while on what is the correct tax rate. If you want to be confused more, drinks were also reclassified so now “soft drink” covers sweetened tea, waters containing artificial sweeteners and sport or energy drinks. So something like Snapple went from being food to being a soft drink. And the tax on soft drinks went up as well.
They’re expecting the new tax increase to bring in around $150 million a year or so.