(PHILADELPHIA) May 26, 2016 – In an effort to promote healthy choices for the community and provide sustainable resources for small businesses, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown (At Large) introduced legislation that would create a tax credit for merchants that choose to sell healthy beverages in their stores.
Healthy beverages are defined as a non-alcoholic beverage that does not list as an ingredient any form of caloric sugar-based sweetener, including but not limited to, sucrose, glucose or high fructose corn syrup.
“While we seek to negotiate the best remedy and best funding mechanism to fund quality Pre-K, community schools and rebuild initiatives, we need to be careful or cautious and sensitive to the potential challenges sure to be faced by small businesses,” said Councilwoman Reynolds Brown.
“The intent of this measure is to incentivize small business owners to move toward selling healthier options.”
Merchants would be required to complete an application that shows the business meets the eligibility criteria by showing a baseline for how many healthy drinks they stock and the increase over time. The credit would be received as a percentage of the healthy drinks stocked.
Qualifying merchants include an owner of a retail food establishment with a permanent location that contains less than 5,000 square feet of floor area, including but not limited to grocery stores, meat markets, drug stores candy stores, and other food stores.
For additional information please contact Communications Manager Haniyyah Sharpe-Brown at 215-686-3438 or 267-324-8839.
# # #
Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown serves as the Majority Whip for City Council. More information at www.phlcouncil.com/BlondellReynoldsBrown.
Photo used under Creative Commons license.
