How Bad Was the Soda Tax?

We've been hoping someone would run the numbers. The Daily Herald finally did:

• Cook County's short-lived penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages not only failed to bring in as much revenue as projected, but it might also have cost the county millions in sales tax revenue as consumers crossed county and state lines to buy their groceries.
  
  In a revenue report released ahead of today's county board meeting, receipts from the first three months of the ill-fated tax show it generated $46.4 million. That's less than the $55 million the tax initially was expected to raise during those three months, though projections later were revised to $49.8 million.
  
  Meanwhile, the county's home-rule sales tax revenue was off by $12 million for the year, the revenue report shows. Cook County Board Commissioner John Daley attributed that to consumers angry about the sweetened beverage tax shopping elsewhere.
  
  "I've never heard so much animosity to a tax than this," Daley said. "People were telling me they'd go to Indiana to buy soda, and they weren't just buying their sodas there, but all their other groceries, too."

The most telling number that drove the panicked Board members to repeal?

• Sweetened beverage tax revenue shrank each month of its existence, according to finance bureau records. The county received $16.6 million in August, $15.3 million in September and $14.4 million in October. The decline in tax revenue from August to September is the equivalent of nearly 2 million fewer 2-liter bottles of soda being sold.

The numbers were dropping every month as people realized how easy it was to shop outside of Cook County, and not just for soda - groceries and gas, too. We're still doing it. Score one for the citizens.