Heard of the Fat tax?

New idea to tax fat people more, because apparantley they cost the national health service(NHS) more than £4 billion pounds a year in the UK.


From the article

The idea here is to make people pay more income tax the fatter they are, so as to incentivise weight loss and repair the damage done to the economy. And the obvious way to create a tax that is both income and blubber-related is to take each individual's annual tax liability (as derived by the current system) and then multiply it by the square root of his BMI over a hundred. So, where L is the normal tax liability:

This way, for example, if your BMI is 36, which is halfway between obese and morbidly obese, you would pay 6 per cent more tax than a normal person. If you currently pay £5,000, you will pay £5,300. It's not a lot in punitive terms but it will comfortably raise the sums we need, and it will give fat people an opportunity to choose between paying up or laying off the sweeties - which is only fair in a sophisticated democracy such as ours.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/giles_coren/article5904268.ece

 

i guess they could have a fair skinned tax...since fair skinned people get melanoma...and it costs taxpayers money........

 

A sin tax on gluttony?

The problem with the author's tongue-in-cheek proposal is that sin taxes aren't adopted as a means for curtailing unhealthy lifestyle choices, but only function as a levy for extra revenue.

Overweight and obese people would do better to have their eating habits and willingness to exercise incentivized through the application of tax credits. That is if we are serious about reducing the prevalence of a bonafide health hazard. Telling people that you're going to tax them because they're fat is not a preventative measure, just a punitive one.

 

Yeah, that's pretty stupid to tax fat people more, singling them out. Plus, some people do eat healthy and are still going to be fat because they don't exercise or they have some kind of medical condition or something. I do like how they are raising taxes on pop/soda and cigarettes though. I think that will help the health of everyone better than taxing fat people more money. Just make the stuff that makes people unhealthy cost more or take it off the shelves. Sorry about the way I worded this, I'm economically challenged, but I think/hope you know what I mean.

 

Shit, I'd have to pay some many taxes haha.

 

Interesting article, but it would never work. So a non-starter in my opinion. And like the chosenone, was suggesting , where would it end. You could also never justify taxing an overweight person with long term health problems either.

 

what next ...don't we already have too many taxes.

 

One of the southern state (Kansas??) was pushing for a bill that mandates anyone with > 30 BMI or certain weight to pay much higher insurance. I am not sure if went thru or not.

 

not quite.