TAX IT, AND THEY WILL LEAVE: Boulder passed the nation’s steepest soda tax; now, to implement it.

Haddock said the city hasn’t begun sorting through the various nuances and challenges of administering the tax.

But one scenario she and other Boulder staffers know they’ll have to prepare for involves business owners heading out of city limits to exploit what could be a loophole in the plan.

It seems like an easy way to skirt the rules: If a restaurant owner wants to avoid paying more to a distributor for a delivery of, say, sugar-sweetened lemonade, why not drive to Louisville or Longmont and buy the product there, where the tax is not in effect?

“I don’t know if that person does become a distributor or not, or how we would implement it,” Haddock said. “That’s one of those real-life examples where we’ll be thinking about how’s the appropriate way to treat them.”

Soda tax shirkers will not be tolerated in the People’s Republic.