Thoughts From The Grocery Store, Part III...

This is the last grocery store / food purchasing anecdote, I promise.

I was reminded of this one when my local grocery store had a no-tax promotion recently. (Despite being quite the deal chaser when it comes to groceries -- my meals for the week are usually dictated by which meat is on sale that week -- I wasn't there to take advantage of the offer.) I usually don't worry about our value-added taxes when I go to the grocery store -- nine times out of ten, no tax is charged on my grocery bills.

I know when to expect taxes. Taxes are charged when I pick up cleaning supplies or toiletries. Taxes are charged when I (very) occasionally pick up snack foods like chips, or candy or chewing gum. Taxes are also charged on soft drinks, so when I grab that case of tonic water, or a bottle of Coke to use as a marinade, there's that little extra at the end of the receipt.

The pattern I'd observed, over years of grocery buying, made sense to me. I figured it was simply a marrying of consumption taxes with public health policy. Prepared food and crap and stuff the government really didn't want you to eat = tax. Fresh produce and 'real' food and eating habits that the government wanted to encourage = no tax.

Last December, I was hosting a poker game at my place for the very first time. As the gracious host, I was responsible for providing snacks. So I went down to the grocery store and grabbed a couple bags of tortilla chips and a large jar of salsa. I also grabbed a box of Pogos. One of the people coming had suggested that Pogos would make a good poker snack. I figured, "What the hell? Why not?"

As I walked out of the grocery store, I discovered something odd as I was reviewing my receipt. Tax had only been charged on a portion of my purchases. There was no tax on the Pogos.

This utterly flabbergasted me. I mean, these are pre-packaged, microwavable corn dogs we're talking about. Overly-processed hot dogs wrapped in equally over-processed batter. Pogos are a hundred-and-eighty calories a pop, with twenty-six percent of daily sodium requirements, and the type of things that require another sixty calories of mustard and ketchup to choke down. To me, these are the epitome of crappy snack food. But, apparently not according to the government.

I was so disgusted by this discovery that I dwelled on it for days before I let it go. The confidence I had in my making sense of this particular tax policy was completely shattered.

Of course, given that this is government tax policy we're talking about, I'm not sure why I thought it should make sense in the first place.