Small businesspeople in the California town of Davis are just finding out about an attempt by food police to tax beverages in the city and are warning fellow citizens about what it means.

“How can you just tax soda? This is really burdensome to restaurants,” Bobby Coyote, owner of Dos Coyotes Border Café told the Sacramento Business Journal.

Dos Coyotes donates to a number of health-related causes, including the nonprofit Davis Farm to School, and Coyote said the Davis city council should look at other measures that won’t hurt small businesses like his. Soda taxes cost jobs and many restaurants depend on soda sales to keep the doors open to the public.

Not only do soda taxes raise prices and costs, they are hard for small businesspeople to manage. Coyote says that his restaurant, like most others, does not charge for refills, making it difficult for his staff to track consumption and apply the tax. Like we have seen in Berkeley, these logistical problems force many restaurants to absorb the majority of the tax. That hurts their businesses.

Singling out one item on a menu for taxation is unfair, unpopular and makes it harder for small businesspeople to cover their costs. That leads to cutbacks in jobs and can even ruin a business that is a part of the community.

To read more about the downfalls of soda taxes visit YourCartYourChoice.com.