Unpleasant Surprises

Not all surprises are pleasant ones. I’m always looking for new and interesting whiskies and whenever I travel I always make a point to check out local liquor stores to see what’s on offer.

This week my day job has taken me to Seattle and I noticed an interesting bourbon for sale that I hadn’t tasted before and it was on sale at a very good price. I decided to buy it and went to the register to pay. But the total was ridiculously high – I questioned the cashier and he said no the total is right and that I had forget to factor in the taxes.

Wait, What? The taxes all total were almost 1/3 of the price of the bourbon. What initially looked like a bargain quickly crossed into the high-end bourbon pricing category. I decided not to buy the bourbon and did a little investigating. It turns out that the high taxes are a temporary result of Washington State transitioning from state run liqour stores to private stores.

I don’t want this to turn into a conversation on taxes but having a tax rate in excess of 30% seems a bit steep – however the voters of Washington did make the choice to incur these taxes in a referendum so I’ll defer to them and keep my opinions to myself. I’ll simply chalk this up to not understanding the local situation fully. That bourbon did look interesting though….

 

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