Mr. McKinney,

Your first sentence was a deceptive tease - a lie.  You are not in the process of sorting the arguments. You had already "sorted through" the arguments when you wrote your first paragraph.  

Elementary economics teaches us no such things.  Prices are directly related to costs.  Selling for less than cost is not possible as a long term business model - and can only be withstood temporarily with the idea behind doing it being best thought of as advertising.  If a company can, it will pass any cost, including this tax, to its customers.  It will do that rather than than reduce profits - the necessary compensation demanded by its owners/capital providers as justification for continuing in business.

Whether a business can succeed in passing costs on to customers is directly related to the elasticity of the demand for their product, the availability of substitute goods and the fierceness of its competitors.

Many of the big payers of the tax will indeed pass it on to us.