I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The second meeting of Governor Bill Richardson’s budget balancing task force happened today.
Not on the list of revenue options under consideration is adding a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. When New Mexico eliminated its tax on food a few years ago, it also eliminated the tax on those kinds of drinks—which generally don’t have nutritional value and contribute to high rates of obesity in the U.S.
As it turns out, there’s a lot of analysis nationally about taxing sodas. In looking around the web, I came across a soft drink calculator on how much revenue adding a “soda tax” would generate, provided by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity.
Using the calculator—which is based on this research, and these data and assumptions—adding a one cent per ounce tax on sugar sweetened beverages would yield $95 million. If you added in diet drinks, it would yield $153 million.
That’s a lot of dough.
The Rudd Center is unabashedly in favor of taxing soft drinks, for health reasons, and provides quite a bit of analysis to support its position.
New Mexico’s budget balancing task force was put together by the governor to examine and give advice on various revenue raising options in advance of the state legislature’s regular session, which will convene in January. The legislature is going to have to plug deficits in this year’s budget, and craft a fiscal year 2011 budget with a major deficit between projected revenues and expenses. Estimates on what that deficit are vary, with some as high as $1 billion.
There are a number of different revenue options being considered by the task force, including increased taxes on liquor and tobacco, a revival of the food tax, the surcharge on top income earners, and various measures to increase taxes collected from corporations.
On Monday, task force members heard presentations explaining New Mexico’s tax system, principles of tax policy, an overview of the 2003 Blue Ribbon Task Force on New Mexico’s tax system, and an overview of revenue options that the task force is being asked to consider.
