There would be some irony in buying a newspaper in Washington DC this morning and putting it in a plastic bag with some groceries, having paid a 5 cent tax just to use that bag, to open up the paper and read this story:
Voters in Juneau have defeated a 15-cent tax on plastic shopping bags.
Unofficial results, with 16 of 16 precincts reporting, showed 4,191 votes against Proposition No. 5 and 1,850 for it.
The proposition asked whether local laws should be changed to allow for the tax, which would be assessed for each bag a person uses. The tax would be collected by retailers that sell grocery, hardware, liquor or sundry items and have had annual average gross sales of $15 million or more over the last five years.
Read the whole article here.
See Reason’s argument against plastic bag taxes here.