Thursday, June 19, 2008

Bottled water tax take falls far short

From the Chicago Sun-Times via Newsalert.
Revenues from Chicago's new bottled water tax are continuing to trickle in -- at less than half of city projections -- despite claims that consumption would rise during warm-weather months.

City Hall predicted a summer surge after the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the first month of collections from the nickel-a-container tax had fallen far short of the city's projections.

Instead, the problem has gotten worse, exacerbating a budget crunch that has already prompted Mayor Daley to order $20 million in mid-year spending cuts and warn of a second round of cuts.

For the first five months of this year, the city collected slightly more than $2 million from the bottled water tax, including $606,286 in April and $472,838 in May.

At that rate, annual collections would be $4.8 million. That's less than 46 percent of the $10.5 million projection included in Daley's tax-laden 2008 budget.

David Vite, president of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, responded by essentially saying, "I told you so."
I suppose someone should be prepared to make some more government cuts. Gotta be careful with taxation.

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