A Legal and Practical Guide for Designing Sugary Drink Taxes

The guide begins by answering the question: Why enact a sugary drink tax? It then identifies best practices and potential pitfalls in designing and implementing sugary drink taxes, focusing on considerations that affect the scope and size of a proposed tax, as well as allocation of tax revenue. The guide briefly examines the process for passing and implementing a tax and ends with a discussion of the potential challenges that future tax efforts might face.

ChangeLab Solutions and Healthy Food America have collaborated on this guide, as an update of the 2016 Best Practices in Designing Local Taxes on Sugary Drinks, reflecting lessons learned from local sugary drink tax efforts over the past two years.